Credit card payment problems for the last 12 hours

For the last 12 hours users trying to make any payments via a credit card would have received an error that the payment had failed.

After investigating this, we’ve found out what the problem was, and have now fixed it. The nature of the problem was such that our system was reporting the payments as failed, but they had actually gone through. Because of that, what we’ve decided to do is:

• For standard “add to account pool” type payments, we’ll refund any
  duplicate payments, and complete the first payment so the money will
  appear in the account pool
• For new account signups, if the account has a valid backup email
  address, we’ll refund any duplicate payments, allow the first
  payment to complete, create the account, and email the backup
  address to let the person know the account has been created
• For new account signups, if the account doesn’t have a valid backup
  email address, we’ll refund all payments, and close the account as
  if it never was created, because there’s no way to inform the person
  that was trying to signup

Because we use a “delayed capture” system for pyaments, this means for the transactions being refunded, users should never even see the transaction appear on their credit card statement.