One of the questions Spotify gets asked a lot is why a payment method was declined. If paying by credit card, Spotify recommends that your credit card meets the following criteria:
Able to work for foreign purchases.
Enabled for e-commerce transactions, including the Verified by Visa or MasterCard SecureCode schemes. However, you don’t need to have signed up to these schemes if you aren’t buying a gift code.
Registered in a country Spotify operates in, which needs to match the country that you set in your profile.
This seems like an obvious one, but worth double-checking: The card needs to be valid. If it’s expired, you need to update details on your subscription page.
If you’re paying by using PayPal, you need to have
A verified PayPal account if paying for a recurring Unlimited or Premium subscription. There are a number of verification methods. The most common requires you to prove that the bank account linked to your PayPal account is yours. You log into PayPal, enter direct debit details for your bank, and then a couple of days later, confirm the amount of two small deposits PayPal makes into your account.
A PayPal account that’s registered to the same country as your Spotify profile.
After you make sure that your payment method fulfills all these criteria and you’re still having problems, you need to contact your bank or card issuer for more information. Spotify keeps trying to withdraw payment, but if it keeps failing, then your account is downgraded to Free. Premium and Unlimited subscribers start hearing ads again, and Premium fans lose their offline access and mobile-streaming privileges.