Cannot purchase API credits — Stripe SetupIntent 0 EUR breaks 3D Secure for all European cards (PSD2/SCA)
Preflight Checklist
- [x] I have searched existing issues and this hasn't been reported yet
- [x] This is a single bug report
- [x] I am using the latest version of Claude Code
What's Wrong?
It is impossible to purchase API credits on platform.claude.com for customers with European bank cards. This has been reported before in #25745 (auto-closed without resolution).
Root Cause (Technical)
Anthropic's billing uses Stripe SetupIntent to verify cards before charging. SetupIntent has no amount — so the 3D Secure challenge is sent as 0.00 EUR. Under EU PSD2/SCA regulations, all online transactions require Strong Customer Authentication. However, European banks cannot process 3DS authentication for zero-amount transactions — their apps show nothing to confirm, or return an error.
The fix is straightforward: use PaymentIntent with the actual purchase amount (e.g., $50) instead of SetupIntent. This way, 3DS would authenticate against a real charge, which banks handle correctly. This is exactly how claude.ai subscriptions (Pro/Max/Team) work — and those payments go through fine with the same cards.
What I've Tried
| Card / Issuer | Type | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Raiffeisenbank CZ Mastercard | Debit | RB key app cannot confirm 0 EUR 3DS |
| Revolut | Visa | 3DS fails on zero amount |
| Wise USD virtual card | Visa (US BIN) | Same failure |
Additional attempts:
- Multiple browsers (Safari, Chrome, Playwright headless)
- Cleared cookies, Stripe Link logout
- Stripe Link email verification → card selection → still fails at 3DS
Error message: "Cannot upgrade to prepaid without a valid payment method."
Impact
- Our Make.com automation (DocuMentor — document processing via Claude API) has been down since April 3rd
- We are existing paying customers: Team plan (5 seats) + Max plan (20x) = ~€290/month
- We submitted Contact Sales form + support email — AI bot responded with generic advice, no human follow-up
Environment
- Org ID: [redacted — provided via support email]
- Account: maxim@mfcc.cz
- Country: Czech Republic (EU)
- Console URL: platform.claude.com/settings/billing
Expected Behavior
Clicking "Buy credits" should charge the card directly (PaymentIntent) or offer alternative payment methods (bank transfer, PayPal, Apple Pay). Zero-amount SetupIntent should not be used for European cards.
Related Issues
- #25745 (same problem, auto-closed without resolution, 15+ affected users)
14 Comments
Found 3 possible duplicate issues:
This issue will be automatically closed as a duplicate in 3 days.
🤖 Generated with Claude Code
This is not a duplicate. The referenced issues (#25745, #45361, #36881) were all auto-closed without any resolution or response from Anthropic.
This issue provides the root cause analysis that was missing from previous reports: Anthropic's billing uses Stripe
SetupIntent(0 EUR) for card verification, which fails under EU PSD2/SCA because European banks cannot process 3D Secure on zero-amount transactions. The fix is to usePaymentIntentwith the actual charge amount — exactly how claude.ai subscriptions already work.This is a billing infrastructure bug affecting all European customers, not a user-side issue. Closing it as a duplicate of unresolved issues doesn't fix the problem — it just silences the reports.
Correct, I have the same issue. Our entire Teams plan is frozen again. We are with 7 people completely blocked ... again.
Our subscriptions renew on the 26th of the month; it happens every time. None of the EU credit cards work; we tried 6 different ones from at least 3 different banks as well.
The same cards are charged by Anthropic for extra usage. So it is not a card/bank issue as such, except for how they use it for recurring billing. The 0 euro value is not accepted.
Same issue, verified with multiple ING cards on multiple browsers.
Same issue here, from Spain (EU). "No such setupintent: 'seti_....'
Have tried different cards, browsers... 4 days and counting.
And the worse thing is that there doesn't seems to be human support... I just get an AI agent allucinating telling me that a human will connect, even providing ref number, but not getting an email on my inbox, which would be the expected.
It's not acceptable that critical issues (like payments) are handled by AI and there is no human support.
Did anyone find a solution?
Finally someone found the real issue! Now let's fix it Anthropic.
Hello, have you find a solution for this issue ? I can't take the Team subscription, same messages as you.
Update everyone! I managed to buy it!
I created a new account which wasn't existing before and immediately bought the business plan during onboarding. That way it worked!!
My experience is a bit different in the sense that cards are actually accepted (validated). However when I try do do the actual payment it fails...otherwise, my pro subscription is charged without any issues. @bcherny can you please have a look at this? or see that someone notices this before the CFO, I am afraid the "invalid" agent tag does not help...
I can confirm that this is still happening and it's preventing us to switch to team plan.
I created a new email adress and could purchase the plan.
I can confirm the same behavior from Portugal. Creating a new account with a different email (same credit card) allowed me to purchase API credits. So, this seems to tell us that some accounts are being blocked from using the API (actually transactions were failing after "Adding credit to your account" and "Almost done"). Still wonder why my API use was blocked, I am not aware of any sins… perhaps we need to have extra tokens usage enabled on our plans? or perhaps Antropic is actually looking after us and OpenClaw triggered such a token spike that cut us off? It certainly ran into my wall very quickly…but it is hard to get answers these days.
Closing for now — inactive for too long. Please open a new issue if this is still relevant.
Adding related public pattern context for Anthropic triage. My unresolved case is also a manual prepaid/API-credit purchase path failure where the billing outcome does not reconcile cleanly with otherwise working Anthropic billing state, so this looks like payment-object / checkout-state / credit-ledger reconciliation rather than a generic card-decline issue.
Privacy-sanitized public incident hub: https://coolak.github.io/anthropic-claude-billing-incident/
I am intentionally not posting card, bank, receipt, invoice, support-thread, or private account identifiers here. The useful owner ask is for Anthropic to correlate SetupIntent/PaymentIntent state, checkout session state, billing emails, successful/failed billing records, credit-ledger posting, entitlement/provisioning state, and support-routing state under one Billing Platform / payment-operations owner.