I’ve been a ChatGPT subscriber for a while with zero payment issues. But starting about a week ago, every payment attempt gets declined — same cards that worked perfectly before.
Here’s what I’ve already tried:
4 different cards (all declined)
Contacted my banks — all of them confirmed no issues on their end and told me to report to OpenAI instead
Cleared cache and cookies
Switched browsers
Reinstalled my PC
Switched to a different PC entirely
Tried different accounts
Nothing worked.
What frustrates me most is that the standard response from support is always “contact your bank” or “try a different browser” — which clearly isn’t the root cause here. When 4 separate cards from different banks all get declined simultaneously, the issue is obviously on OpenAI’s payment processing side.
Also worth noting: there is no PayPal or alternative payment option available in Japan, which makes this even more of a dead end for users here .
I genuinely find it ironic that one of the world’s largest AI platforms makes it this difficult for paying customers to actually pay. I’m sure I’m not alone in this — has anyone else been experiencing the same issue recently? Any actual workaround that isn’t just “clear your cache”?
Would love to hear from others or from anyone at OpenAI who can look into this.
Thanks for detailing everything you’ve already tried, especially testing multiple cards, checking with your banks, and trying across different devices. That definitely sounds more extensive than the usual browser or cache-related issues.
If you’ve already contacted OpenAI Support and have a case ID, could you share it here so I can reference it internally? If not, please create a support ticket through the Help Center and share the case ID once you receive it.
In addition to the reply from @OpenAI_Support, you may be able to sidestep this issue by signing up for ChatGPT through the Google Play Store or Apple App Store. Both offer PayPal as a payment option, which should resolve the issue for now.
@OpenAI_Support Having the same issue. Tried all the recommended steps and USAA is telling me they don’t have any blocks on this merchant. Nothing they can do on their end. I don’t want to use a credit card for this. Case Number: 08623682.
Thanks for sharing the case ID. I took a look from my end and can see that there was a successful payment on May 10.
I can also see that some earlier payment attempts were declined, which may have been related to temporary card/payment authorization issues at the time. Since the latest payment appears to have gone through successfully, you should now be able to continue using the service normally.
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