Issues making a booking
 

For the last five hours, I have been trying to make a booking with CX with a foreign credit card (Canadian). Although I have tried two different Visas and a MasterCard, each time the payment fails. I have tried doing this on a mac, on a Windows, and on an iPhone, but to no avail.

The booking is from PEK to SIN, if that makes a difference.

I have also called in to the call center and got a payment link that way - nothing works. Any ideas what I can do?

Have you tried calling the credit card company to ask why they are rejecting the transaction?

Yes, they said it wasn’t them. In the end, I had to pay with a fourth card that was in my own name. Apparently, the CX system was arbitrarily auto-declining the transactions for that reason with 1) a cryptic error code and 2) despite explicitly stating that having the cards be in another name is not an issue.

All in all, took 7 hours out of my day. What a bother!

This has happened to me as well multiple times.

There are certainly issues with Cathay's payment processors in some markets. I had a similar issue a while back tring to book a one-way ticket from MAA to HKG using a HK credit card. Cathay said the transaction failed and didn't issue a ticket. But then 2 weeks later a charge appeared on my credit card account for the non-existent ticket. It took quite some effort and messaging with CX and HSBC to get that reversed.