TravelFlow takes card payments through PayU. This article covers what happens when a card payment does not go through and what to do next. If you are paying for a hotel booking made through the GDS, read the Payment Holds and Re-authorization article as well — those payments place a hold rather than charging the card immediately.
Card Declined or Not Approved
A declined card is the most frequent payment issue. The checkout form shows Payment was not approved, or a message from the bank. Common reasons are insufficient funds, the card being blocked for online transactions, or the bank flagging the transaction. Contact your bank to confirm the card is enabled for online payments, then retry.
“Card tokenization failed”
This appears before the payment is even sent to the bank: the card details could not be encrypted in your browser. Check the card number, expiry and CVV for typos, disable any extension that blocks scripts, and reload the checkout page before trying again.
3D Secure Redirects
Many South African cards require 3D Secure. When they do, the browser leaves TravelFlow for your bank's verification page and returns afterwards. Do not close the tab or use the back button during that step. If you return to a page reading Payment Status Unknown, the outcome could not be read from the redirect — do not simply retry. Check the booking or invoice first, and contact your consultant if it is still unclear.
“Payment failed. Please try again or contact support.”
This is the fallback message shown when the gateway returns something TravelFlow cannot interpret, typically a timeout or a network error between PayU and the bank. Wait a few minutes and check whether the payment appears against the booking or invoice before retrying, because the attempt may have gone through on the gateway side.
Checking Whether a Payment Went Through
Consultants can review recorded payments under Documents > Payments, and each invoice detail page has a Payment History section listing the payments applied to that invoice. Corporate-portal clients see the payment state under the Bookings link in the portal navigation bar; private travellers use Bookings > My Bookings and then open the booking to see its payment detail.
There is no payment-gateway console inside TravelFlow, and nothing chases an in-progress card payment on your behalf: the outcome arrives either in the gateway's own response or in PayU's notification callback, so refreshing the page after a minute or two is the way to see an updated state. One background job does exist, but it only looks after authorization holds on GDS hotel bookings — hourly it retries the capture on bookings the supplier already confirmed, marks lapsed holds as expired, and cancels requests left un-re-authorized. See the Payment Holds and Re-authorization article.
Duplicate Payments
Retrying at the checkout is not blocked, so a second attempt can create a second charge or a second hold on the card. Always check the booking or invoice before paying again. Duplicates are not reversed automatically. Refunds are deliberate actions: a captured payment is refunded when a consultant approves a cancellation under Bookings > Cancellations, otherwise support has to raise the refund. Report a suspected duplicate straight away rather than waiting for it to clear itself.
When PayU's answer to a refund is unclear, or PayU confirmed it but TravelFlow could not save it, TravelFlow keeps the payment on hold and sends no second refund; from 15 minutes later a consultant, consultant admin or super admin presses Check PayU on the invoice's PayU refunds, or anyone who decides cancellations presses it on the cancellation queue. It reads PayU's own list of refunds and records what it shows, dated the day PayU made the refund. Accountants ask one of them to check. A refund made in the PayU dashboard, or paid back by EFT, cash or bank transfer, is recorded on the invoice by finance, so the invoice shows the money returned.
Contacting Support for Payment Issues
When raising a payment support ticket, include the booking or invoice reference, the amount, the date and time of the attempt, and the last four digits of the card used. That is enough to trace the transaction through PayU.