First up, I've successfully completed the transaction in question, so there isn't any problem directly involving money. In case it's useful the transaction number was 2078921. In the course of making my purchase I ran into an issue with the way the site handled the CCV number.
Here's what happened, step by step.
1. I tried to make a purchase with a new card. I entered the details, including the card number and finally the CCV number.
2. The transaction was declined, due to lack of funds in the account.
3. I retried the transaction, using a different credit card. When I tried to make the purchase, it was declined due to an error in either the credit card number or the CCV number. However I had not been given the opportunity to enter the CCV number for the second card.
Repeat 3 several times after checking the number, to a certain amount of irritation.
4. I transferred money to the first card to cover the transaction and used it to make my purchase. The transaction went through, without me needing to reenter the CCV number. The Paizo site had stored the number when I first entered it.
I think the reason for the failure in step 3 was because the site was applying the CCV value from the first card to the second card. Not being a programmer, I'm not sure how easy it would be, but maybe a solution would be for the site to re-verify the CCV if a transaction has already been declined?
Senior Software Developer
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The rules for handling card verification numbers are very strict—we don't store the CVV at all. We just set a flag that says that the bank verified that it was entered properly for a particular card. In this case, the flag got set at step 1 because the CVV number matched, so we didn't ask for it again when you tried that payment method again. Because we don't store credit card numbers or CVV numbers in the logs, I can't verify exactly what happened in step 2, but it's possible our credit card processor was having difficulties talking to that card's bank at that moment.