Sudden Increase in failed credit card processing with paypal payment pro

We use the "paypal payment Pro" to process credit cards directly on our website, which has been working well for over 6 months. Since a few weeks ago, we suddenly noticed a large increase in failed transaction. There has been no changes to our software. We've tested the credit card processing with our own credit card, and it all works properly, we cannot replicate the problem.
Although this issue happened on occasion before, presumably when a customer types in incorrect info for the credit card, it now happens for many transactions, so something has changed. The customers are all legit, and are mostly people that have purchased from us before.

AFAIK Paypal finished all their security updated months ago, and it's all been working fine since then until a few weeks ago.

I know there was a security update on the server of our host ("dovecot connections changing to force the use of TLS 1.2") a few weeks ago, so it may be possible that this is related?

The error logs don't really give any further information, other than the transaction failing.

Has anyone else experienced this recently, or can anyone offer any tips on how to resolve it?

Thanks a lot!

Error message below, personal details replaced with XXXXXXXXXX:

Quote:

---

Dear store owner,
An error occurred when attempting to initiate the payment-validation transaction. As a courtesy, only the error "number" was shown to your customer. The details of the error are shown below.

15005
Processor Decline
This transaction cannot be processed.

Zen Cart message: 15005 Processor Decline - This transaction cannot be processed.

Problem occurred while customer 10763 XXXXXXXXXX was attempting checkout with PayPal Website Payments Pro.

Transaction Response Details: Array
(
[TIMESTAMP] => 2018-09-11T14:51:03Z
[CORRELATIONID] => e772db6def5cc
[ACK] => Failure
[VERSION] => 124.0
[BUILD] => 46457558
[L_ERRORCODE0] => 15005
[L_SHORTMESSAGE0] => Processor Decline
[L_LONGMESSAGE0] => This transaction cannot be processed.
[L_SEVERITYCODE0] => Error
[L_ERRORPARAMID0] => ProcessorResponse
[L_ERRORPARAMVALUE0] => 05
[AMT] => 59.00
[CURRENCYCODE] => AUD
[AVSCODE] => U
[CVV2MATCH] => M
[CURL_ERRORS] =>
)


Transaction Submission: Array
(
[ACCT] => ************6889
[AMT] => 59.00
[CARDISSUE] =>
[CITY] => Lalor Park
[COUNTRYCODE] => AU
[CREDITCARDTYPE] => Visa
[CUSTOM] => XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
[CVV2] => ***
[EMAIL] => XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
[EXPDATE] => 122019
[FIRSTNAME] => XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
[INVNUM] => XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX]
[IPADDRESS] => XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
[ITEMAMT] => 51.00
[LASTNAME] => XXXXXXXX
[L_AMT0] => 48.00
[L_AMT1] => 0.75
[L_NAME0] => XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
[L_NAME1] => XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
[L_QTY0] => 1
[L_QTY1] => 4
[NOTIFYURL] => https://tabletennisshop.com.au/ipn_main_handler.php
[PAYMENTACTION] => Sale
[PAYMENTREQUEST_0_PAYMENTACTION] => Sale
[PHONENUM] => XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
[SHIPPINGAMT] => 8.00
[SHIPTOCITY] => XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
[SHIPTOCOUNTRYCODE] => AU
[SHIPTONAME] => XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
[SHIPTOSTATE] => NSW
[SHIPTOSTREET] => XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
[SHIPTOZIP] => 2147
[STATE] => NSW
[STREET] => XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
[ZIP] => 2147
[METHOD] => DoDirectPayment
[CURRENCYCODE] => AUD
)


Problem occurred while customer #10763 -- XXXXXXX -- was attempting checkout.

---

From the Address Verification Codes' wiki:

Code U: Address information unavailable. Returned if the U.S. bank does not support non-U.S. AVS or if the AVS in a U.S. bank is not functioning properly.

Are all the failures the same cart type, e.g. Visa in the example you provided? Perhaps there's an issue associated with a specific issuing bank?

In the meantime, it might make sense to use Optional Payment Method:
https://www.zen-cart.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=1930

and install a second payment method, like Braintree or Square.

I'm a fellow sufferer. :( Getting lots of 10486 errors from Paypal.

https://www.zen-cart.com/showthread....t-be-completed

It may not necessarily be Paypal's fault. Our site recently had over a dozen charges that WENT THROUGH PayPal, but they were fraudulent as we found out later. It may be a huge bunch of compromised card numbers hit the dark web for sale and someone was trying all of them. We only discovered the fraud after there was an odd pattern - we had repeated declines for the same customer, sometimes as many as 8 attempts (but upon examination each decline was a different credit card) and all of the "customers" had weird email addresses. Most email addresses typically contain some form of the customer's name or some sort of real english word + numbers. These addresses were jumbles of letters at gmail.com. Without fail, each charge also failed address verification, but some of them were successfully processed by PayPal.

We have since implemented PayPals additional fraud protection features and fortunately we only shipped one item before the fraudulent pattern was discovered. But if you're seeing a lot of errors, take a look at the customers those errors belong to. You might see a pattern there.