After we create a new store, add credit card details, and choose a Shopify plan, when trying to install a paid app, we encounter this error: “This charge couldn’t be approved because there isn’t an active payment method on file.” It’s been more than a week since we first encountered this, and we have been able to replicate the issue every day since then.
This error appears when you create a new store through the normal Shopify flow (in which you receive the 1$ for 3 months deal, add the credit card directly in the flow) and after the store is created you install a paid app and try to approve the plan.I think this is affecting all paid apps, we tested at least 3 of the most popular paid apps (Vitals, Loox, Kaching) and the error reproduced.
However, there are times when the plan approval works, so it’s an intermittent issue.
Thank you for reporting this! I have already tried with Shopify support, posted on several Slack channels, and have had no luck solving the issue so far
Hi Paige! Thanks for jumping in. Can you DM me first? It seems that I don’t have the option to DM you in my account. I will send you all the details and I did some screen recordings to show you the issue.
I came across the same error when trying to purchase a paid theme on a newly created development store. There seems to be a delay for the payment method to propagate and become “active“. Assuming that you have no other error, you’ll just have to wait and retry after a few minutes. - Hope it helps
Yup, you’re very much on to it there.
Our solution to this might be a UX improvement so users know to wait a little before making purchases, but we will have to see.
Sometimes it takes several minutes, but based on our testing, it sometimes took several hours until the plan could be approved, so a simple message to inform users does not solve this. And as we know, people abandon a process if they have to wait, and it’s almost impossible to recover them
Hopefully, Shopify will solve the underlying issue causing this.
Hi all, just providing an update.
We are still working on resolving this issue, but at this time we don’t yet have an ETA we can share for when the fix will be shipped.
The root cause is that there a lot of processes that happen behind the scenes when a payment method is first added to a shop, and sometimes these can take awhile.
