Your card number never reaches us.

When you press Pay now, you are on Shopify's checkout rather than on a page we built. The card fields are served by Shopify and [Payment provider], your details go straight to them, and the number is replaced by a token before anything comes back to the shop. Your card number never touches our servers, because it never reaches them.

That checkout is certified to PCI DSS Level 1, the strictest of the four levels the card industry defines. The certification is Shopify's, not [Company name]'s — which is precisely why we use it. We could not hold card data to that standard, so we made sure we never hold it at all.

Everything travelling between your browser and the checkout is encrypted. Two practical consequences: we cannot re-enter a card for you over the telephone, and we cannot look one up to correct a typo. If you ever land on a payment page for this shop that is not a Shopify checkout, close it and tell us.

Most card payments in the United Kingdom and the European Union pass through 3-D Secure — the step where your bank asks you to confirm it is really you, usually in the banking app, sometimes with a code by text. It is required by the strong customer authentication rules under PSD2, and your bank decides when to ask. We cannot switch it on, off, or around.

The code goes to your bank and nowhere else. Nobody from [Company name] will ever ask you to read one out.

If the check fails or the page times out, the order does not complete and no money moves. Start again, or use a different method. A failed authentication is a step in a process, not a mark against you — and it is the most common reason a perfectly good card appears to be refused.

Cards — Visa, Mastercard and American Express — and the wallets: Shop Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay and PayPal. Gift card codes come off the total in the discount field, and any balance left over stays on the card for next time.

The honest caveat: only the methods actually enabled for your order appear at checkout. It depends on your country, your device and your browser. Apple Pay needs an Apple device and Safari. Google Pay needs Chrome or Android. Some methods are not offered outside [Country]. If a logo sits on a product page but not on your checkout, that is why — the page shows what the shop can take, not what your particular basket will be offered.

We cannot take bank transfers, cheques or cash on delivery. If none of the methods above work where you are, write to us. For larger or corporate orders we can sometimes send an invoice with a payment link instead.

Two things happen when you pay. First an authorisation: your bank checks the money is there and sets it aside. Then a capture: the money moves to us. On an ordinary order both happen within seconds of you confirming, so you are charged when the order is placed rather than when the parcel goes out.

Sometimes you will see a charge that is not a charge. A pending authorisation — a hold, or what banks used to call an imprint — is money reserved but never taken. In a banking app it looks exactly like a payment. It falls away on its own, usually within a few working days, occasionally up to thirty depending on the bank, and no money ever moves.

You will see one if a payment was attempted and failed, if an order was cancelled before capture, or if you tried twice and only the second attempt went through. A failed order can still show a pending amount. It is not a second charge and it is not lost. If it has not cleared after ten working days, send us the order number and the date and we will confirm from our side that nothing was taken.

The rule worth remembering: no order exists unless you have a confirmation email with an order number in it. If there is no email, there is no order, whatever your banking app is showing.

Prices across the shop are shown in US dollars unless your region is offered a local currency at checkout. Whichever currency the checkout shows is the currency you are billed in, and the total on the final screen is the total you agree to pay.

If your card is issued in another currency, your bank converts the amount at their rate on the day, and many banks add a foreign transaction fee on top. That rate and that fee are between you and your bank. We never see either, which is why the figure on your statement can differ slightly from the figure on your receipt.

Refunds go back in the currency you paid in. If the exchange rate has moved in between, the sum landing in your account may not match the sum that left it. We always refund the full amount we received — the difference is the conversion, not a deduction, and we cannot make it up because we never had it.

What tax you pay depends on where the parcel is going. The checkout works it out from your delivery address and shows it before you confirm, never after.

• United Kingdom and European Union. VAT is included in the price you see, and orders travel duties paid. The total at checkout is the total you pay, and nothing is collected at the door.
• Everywhere else. Prices are shown without local tax, and import duties and taxes are set by the destination country and payable by the recipient on delivery. We cannot calculate them in advance or pay them on your behalf, because they are charged by a customs authority we have no relationship with.

Worth knowing if the pen is a surprise: a duty bill arriving at their door rather ruins the moment. Send it to yourself first, then hand it over.

[Company name] is registered for VAT in [Country] under number [VAT number], which appears on every invoice. Zone-by-zone delivery detail lives on the shipping page.

Your order confirmation email is your receipt. It lists every item, the tax charged, the delivery cost and the last four digits of the card. Keep it — it is also the quickest way for us to find an order months later.

With an account, every invoice sits in your order history and can be downloaded again whenever you like. If you checked out as a guest, ask and we will send it across.

Buying for a company? Tell us before the parcel ships and we will reissue the invoice with your company name, address and VAT number on it, so the tax can be reclaimed properly. Ask afterwards and we can still do it; it simply takes a day or two longer.

What we cannot do is change the amount, the date or the currency on an invoice, or write one showing a lower value than you paid to reduce somebody's import duty. That is not caution on our part. It is the law, in every country we ship to.

A refusal is rarely anything to do with you, and it is worth knowing that banks do not tell shops why. We are told the payment failed and nothing more. These are the usual causes, in rough order of likelihood:

• A typo in the card number, the expiry date or the security code.
• The billing address does not match the one your bank holds for the card. This is the single most common cause, and postcodes catch most people out.
• 3-D Secure was not completed — a banking app notification missed, or a page that timed out.
• The card does not allow international or online payments. Common with some prepaid and basic debit cards.
• A daily spending limit, or funds that have not cleared yet.
• Your bank's own fraud check, tripped by an unfamiliar merchant name.

What to do, in order: check the billing address, then try the same card once more. If it fails twice, use a different card or a wallet — Shop Pay and PayPal often go through where a raw card does not. If it still fails, ring the number on the back of your card. Banks can usually clear a block in under a minute, and many will not release it until they have heard from you.

Each attempt can leave a pending authorisation behind it. They clear on their own, and you have not been charged several times over.

Shopify runs an automatic risk check on every order and shows us an indicator. We see whether the address and security-code checks passed, whether the card's country matches the delivery country, and whether the order resembles others that turned out to be fraudulent. A flag and a short reason, nothing more. We do not see your card number, and we cannot see anything your bank holds about you.

Where an order is flagged, we may hold the parcel and write to you before dispatching it. We might ask you to confirm the delivery address from the email address that placed the order, or to confirm the last four digits of the card. That is the whole extent of it.

If we cannot resolve a flagged order, we cancel it and refund it in full rather than gamble with somebody else's money. You are welcome to order again with a different method, and we will say so plainly rather than leave you guessing.

What we do hold is the order itself: your name, your addresses, your email, what you bought, the card brand, the last four digits and the authorisation result. We do not hold the card number, the security code or anything that could be used to take a payment. How long the rest is kept, and what you can ask us to delete, is set out in the privacy policy.

If a charge looks wrong, write to us before you raise it with your bank. Most disputes we see turn out to be a duplicate authorisation that had not yet cleared, or a name on a statement nobody recognised. Both are answered in one email. A refund from us takes days; a chargeback takes months and helps nobody in the meantime.

If you would rather go straight to your bank, that is entirely your right and we will not hold it against you. We answer the evidence request honestly, and where the charge was ours to put right we say so rather than fight it.

A charge you genuinely do not recognise is card fraud rather than a shop dispute. Ring your bank first and freeze the card. Then send us the order number if you have one, and we will cancel anything that has not yet shipped.

Nothing on this shop bills you again automatically. There is no subscription, no membership and no recurring charge for the app — one order, one payment.

If you use Shop Pay, Shopify stores your details for you, not us. You can remove them from your Shop Pay account whenever you like, and we never see them either way. Checking out as a guest stores nothing at all beyond the order record itself.

So if a repeating charge from us ever appears on your statement, something has gone wrong. Write to us and ring your bank, in that order.

We update this page when the checkout changes, when a payment method comes or goes, or when the tax rules move. The date at the top is the version you are reading, and the terms that applied to your order are the ones published on the day you placed it.

Nothing here limits the rights consumer law already gives you where you live. If this page and the law ever point in different directions, the law wins and we will not argue about it.