Purchasing Swiss rail passes with US credit card – payment fails
Jmhilde is frustrated trying to purchase 15 rail passes for their group trip to Switzerland. They faced repeated payment failures on the SBB and STC websites using US VISA cards and need advice on resolving the issue and eventually securing their passes. After seeking help, they finally managed to purchase the passes successfully.
- Check with your bank for any restrictions on international purchases before trying again.
- When purchasing multiple passes, consider trying smaller groups to see if that resolves payment issues.
- Ensure the currency is set to CHF before adding items to avoid inflated USD prices.
- Keep a backup of passes either digitally or in print, especially when traveling with a group.
AI-generated summary-
I’m finally getting around to purchasing the 15 railpasses my group will use on our upcoming trip, only to be crushed by both the SBB and STC websites rejecting both of my (United States) VISA cards with a “payment unsuccessful” message every time. The first card was rejected outright. Using the second card actually resulted in my being sent a security verification code, which I dutifully entered and then, holding my breath, hit “purchase”, only to again be sadly disappointed with the resulting “payment unsuccessful” message.
I wrote to SBB/STC customer service and was advised to try using my mobile phone. This meant entering 15 sets of information on my phone’s tiny keypad! (Because for some unimaginable reason the ordering system does not give the option of saving passenger information and then just clicking to fill in the blanks.) After all that effort, and after again trying both credit cards, yep, you guessed it, I got the dreaded “payment unsuccessful” message yet again.
(Also, rather annoyingly, the mobile phone STC website automatically converted the CHF charges to USD at an EXORBITANT rate! An extra $250 USD compared to the current exchange rate!)
I know that both my VISA cards have the 3-D secure system activated because I use them for overseas purchases all the time.
I’m so frustrated. I’d appreciate any advice or tips anyone might have! 🙂
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Hi Jmhilde,
That is very annoying indeed. It is strange too, because payment issues on https://www.swissrailways.com (STC, the tourist shop of SBB) are pretty rare. Here are a few suggestions:
- Check with your bank as they should have more details about what the exact issue is. Perhaps you hit a daily limit for international purchases or something like that.
- It could be a temporary issue, so trying again later might help.
- If the currency dropdown at the top of https://www.swissrailways.com is set to CHF before you start adding passes to your shopping cart, it should not switch to USD in my experience. If this only happened on your phone then it sounds like a website issue. Check with them if needed. Contact information can be found here: https://www.myswissalps.com/about/partners/. Indeed purchase in CHF, that’s often the cheapest way.
- You can also try to buy from one of the other vendors. All purchase options listed here are trusted and safe: https://www.myswissalps.com/travel-ticket/swiss-travel-pass/#tickets
You may be aware already, but just in case: since you’ll be purchasing 15 passes, you may qualify for this group discount: https://www.myswissalps.com/travel/tickets/group/.
Thanks, Arno!
My 15 passes are actually three different passes (Half Fare, BO, Tell) for five different people so our group isn’t big enough to qualify as a “group.”
I did look at the alternate vendors but I wasn’t seeing the configurations of days that we need.
My bank doesn’t show that any payments have even been attempted so I don’t think the process got that far. As I said, with one card I did receive a “verification code” but even entering that didn’t do the trick.
I’m waiting to hear back from SBB/STC customer service so maybe they’ll have some ideas. In the meantime I’ll just keep trying, I may get lucky! Such is the magic… and madness… of the internet. 🙂
Hi Jmhilde,
Perhaps you can split the purchase into smaller groups? Instead of buying 15 railpasses in one go, maybe get just 5 first, then repeat. I know this means more effort but it might just work. Some hotels limit bookings to 5 rooms per booking so maybe this is the same case.
Best regards,
Anna
An excellent idea, Anna! Unfortunately, that did not work either. 🙁
I guess we’ll just wait and purchase our train passes when we get to Zurich. It’ll all be good!
Hopefully, STC is able to solve/explain this. Otherwise, you can indeed buy locally but that’s a rather time-consuming process and you’ll end up with less convenient paper passes. Please keep us posted.
By the way, getyourguide.com offers these passes too but not the discounted versions for Swiss Half Fare Card holders, which is probably what you need.
The website did not reject your card. The bank rejected the transaction.
If you cut and paste the card #, that can cause rejection.
You may have a limit on certain international online purchases. Change it by contacting bank card provider.
Contact your bank card provider and ask them to look at transaction request history. They can see the request and advise why rejected. If no requests exist, then yes, website did not process.
Exchange rate swap rate is set by your bank, not the website.
Best path forward, contact bank card provider.
I did contact my bank(s) and neither of them have any record of any attempts at payment from SBB/STC. Again, I’ve used both cards for many, many online overseas purchases and have never had this issue before.
I may have mischaracterized when I said “exchange rate.” The STC website automatically gave me costs in USD (although I hadn’t asked for that) and when I checked the current exchange rate, their USD cost was far above ($250) what it would cost me to pay in CHF.
I entered my card number(s) manually so cut & paste isn’t the problem (although I have seen some websites do that.)
Sure appreciate everyone’s suggestions. It’s a mystery!
A happy ending to the saga! Upon GTMike’s sage advice, I called my bank AGAIN and after being transferred five different times, I found someone in the fraud department who (she told me) was one of the few customer service agents “who knows the secret” (I kid you not) of what needed to be done. She had to add the EMV 3-D Secure “benefit” to my card, which she did. Couldn’t tell me why that hadn’t already been done or why my card works for every other overseas vendor but she didn’t blame SBB/SCT, she honestly said this has been an ongoing problem with this particular Visa vendor, that the 3-D secure system randomly refuses vendor requests, randomly doesn’t send the required verification code, randomly DOES work, with no apparent rationale. She sighed a lot while she told me all this.
Anyway, I have now successfully purchased all 15 of my group’s passes! 🙂
My next request: How do I save these passes? I tried to scan the QR code to save a pass to Google Wallet (I have an android phone) but got an “unsupported QR code” response from Wallet. I also had no luck opening/viewing the pass document from the website (I got an “unrecognized format” reply.)
Ideas? You all have been SO generous with helping me, it’s much appreciated! 🙂
I’m happy to hear that! Credit cards can be a real mystery. It’s taken you a lot of time, but now that you have the digital passes it will at least save a lot of time on arrival.
There’s no need for a wallet app. If you use one, it should support PDF files. But there’s no need and you can save the PDF files on your phone like any other file you’d download from the internet. You should receive the passes as PDF attachments in an e-mail (check your spam folder if you don’t see them), and you can save them on your phone from there. Details can be found under “How to start using your digital Swiss Half Fare Card” at https://www.myswissalps.com/travel-ticket/swiss-half-fare-card/.
Thanks, Arno! I’m a big fan of “simple is best” but even so I got caught up in the app trap! When I read your advice I chuckled at myself (well, actually, I thought “duh, I should have known that!”) Simply saving the passes as PDFs is clearly the best (and easiest) way to go. Although my husband disagrees. He’s still old school and prints everything out on paper! 🙂
Great! Yeah, a printout is a good backup if your phone dies, but I use the digital version by default. Another advantage of digital passes is that you can have copies of the passes of your travel companions on your phone, so even if one phone dies you can still access the pass. A paper copy is hardly needed like that, but it’s a personal preference.
We kept a folder of hard copy on each of our train ferry and museum site QR or Barcode documents passes as back up. Lost stolen dead phone is a possibility.
I made a folder for each leg of journey to help keep sorted. We had over 60 prepaid items. I also changed name of file to help.
Filename was date used and venue
20240518visprail -origin visp
20240518zermattrail origin zermatt
20240518cogtrain
Otherwise, glad your bank could explain. I had similar problem with one Italy ferry service and Pompeii site access online.
GTMike, you and my husband are birds of a feather! He keeps a file of hard copies of all of our passes, reservations, tickets, itinerary, etc. And it’s usually a BIG file because we often travel with a group and, as I’m always the trip planner, we keep hard copies of everything for everyone. One trip we had 17 people!
I’ve been pleasantly surprised with all the traveling we’ve done that I really seldom have these type of issues. And when I do, I take a deep breath and remind myself that for my first trip to Europe (I’m in the US) way back in 1979 (my high school “29 countries in 29 days” trip), my family literally had to send me mail months ahead of time to the various places I was staying. We also had to wire money to our accommodations (something I still see on occasion) and, of course, we had to set up times to talk on the phone to account for the time difference. I can still hear the tinny recorded payphone voice telling me to deposit more coins if I wanted to keep talking! 🙂
The stories I could tell. First trips early 70s into communist eastern Europe. 8 and 10 weeks at a time.
My dad made reservations by mail. Would take a month to get confirmations back. Paid with AmEx money. No credit cards.
Glad all the technical details worked out. Hope your husband’s back up system is never needed !
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