Unable to use Visa debit (north American)

[Enkidoh]

Well, there are several aspects of the situation with multiple factors at play. The long and short of it is though that Square Enix changed the third-party company that is responsible for processing debit and credit card subscription and billing for not just the game, but Mogstation services like Retainers, purchases on the Online Store, and even the Square Enix Store which sells the game itself. The reason for this is, apparently, to help reduce the spiralling incidents of account and card fraud, but unfortunately it's caused major issues. Connected to this is SE has also brought in a requirement for all players to verify their billing address before payment can even be processed (apparently this is due to a change in law in several US states requiring sales tax to be paid on online service subscriptions for residents of that state, hence SE is legally required to check this).

Unfortunately, this has proven to be a massive problem, as multiple issues have occurred that all interplay with each other. The ones I'm aware of are below:

Address verification not working/correct address not being recognized

As mentioned, part of the change to the new payment processor is all players (or more accurately, everyone who has a Square Enix Account, whether you play FFXIV or FFXI) have to verify their address for billing purposes before payment can be processed to satisfy legal requirements in the US - specifically, tax - even if that player is not a US citizen (to determine who is legally required to pay this tax, namely, a player who a resident of that US state for tax purposes). Unfortunately it appears the online form for doing so is programmed very rigidly and only accepts addresses written in a certain way and is throwing up errors or stating the address is invalid if it's not written a certain way, presumedly because it's checking an online database to actually verify it. Apparently a way around this is to use an online address matching service like those used by postal services in each country, but I haven't checked this. And unfortunately this has to be verified before any kind of payment can be processed by the SE Account Management System, hence the dillema. This also leads into another issue:

Address invalid due to player moving country/international region from where they originally created their account from

This is something that SE has never supported - creating the account/using one region's version of the game but then moving to another country/region, (such as NA to EU), but generally did not enforce it until now, and unfortunately players are getting caught out by this if they happen to move to another country, try entering their curent address, and the system is registering it as invalid because it doesn't match where the account was created. I've heard using a fake (but real) address can help bypass this, but this would be a violation of the ToS so I don't reccomend it.

'That Card is Unavailable' error/debit cards not working or not being accepted as valid

This is the big issue that is causing the most issue - cards that formerly worked fine for payment under the old system, are being registered as 'Unavailable' when a player tries to make a purchase. As noted offically by SE, Visa debit cards specifically are being classed as invalid when they should be working due to a bug apparently, but other cards (such as Mastercard debit cards) have also been affected. My suspiscion is it is simply an oversight by the new payment vendor (who apparently only thought Visa and Mastercard meant credit cards), but I have no proof for that. Apparently Visa and Mastercard credit cards still work however. And unfortunately, although SE stated they're working to address this, no further information has been released about a possible timeframe for when it will be fixed, so it's still under a cloud at the moment. And this issue just doesn't affect subscriptions and the Online Store, ancedotal evidence suggests that this even affects the purchase of Dawntrail itself - players who have preordered it have suddennly found their preorders cancelled with a 'payment invalid' error. I haven't seen any conclusive proof for that though.

European-specific payment methods/cards no longer being accepted

This is actually seperate from the Visa debit issue above - where many European players have suddennly found their payment methods no longer valid or working. These are specific special debit cards only available in Europe which formerly were supported by the SE Account Management System, as a payment method, but the new payment processor does not support them. SE actually announced this earlier in the year and just before the changeover however, but this mostly went under the radar of players until it was too late sadly. Unfortunately this was working as intended and sadly nothing can be done about it, although SE did state that there is a possibility of new payment methods being offered in the future, but nothing is known for sure.

I have also heard about some players even being unable to get alternative payment methods such as Amazon Pay or time cards to work, but I suspect the cause of that is the address verification thing rearing it's ugly head.

That's pretty much the long and short of it.