What error E-403 means
When you click Add funds, Storeep hands the payment to our external payment provider. The window that opens on top of your dashboard belongs to that provider, not to Storeep. If it shows "Something went wrong. Please try again later." with the code E-403, and no card fields ever appear, the provider has refused to open a payment session for you.
E-403 is about where you are, not about your store, your amount, or your card. Our provider does not process payments from a small number of countries, and it works out which country you are in from your internet connection. The refusal happens before the card form is built, which is why you never get to type anything.
Nothing is charged and nothing is lost when this happens:
- Your wallet balance and due amount stay exactly as they were.
- The deposit stays a pending transaction. Your next attempt updates that same row instead of adding a new one, so retrying does not fill your history with failed lines.
- No card details reached anyone, because the form never loaded.
Countries that are not covered
Our payment provider currently does not process payments from these countries:
- Afghanistan
- Belarus
- Central African Republic
- Cuba
- Democratic Republic of the Congo
- Haiti
- Iran
- Iraq
- Libya
- Mali
- Myanmar
- Nicaragua
- North Korea
- Russia
- Somalia
- South Sudan
- Sudan
- Syria
- Venezuela
- Yemen
- Zimbabwe
The list is set by the provider, not by Storeep, and it exists to meet international sanctions and anti-money-laundering rules. It can change at any time, in either direction. Ukraine is covered, but the deposit is blocked from Crimea, Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia under the same sanctions. The checkout window is always the authority: if it opens and shows the card form, your country is covered.
Where the block comes from
The check is applied to the country of the internet connection you are using at the moment the payment window opens. It is not read from your Storeep account, from your store address, or from the markets you sell in, so no setting inside Storeep changes it.
Some merchants try to reach the checkout through a connection in another country. Storeep does not recommend this. The check exists to meet compliance rules, and working around it can breach our payment provider's terms and put your store account and your funds at risk.
The Virtual VPN app in your dashboard is unrelated to this. It previews your storefront as a buyer in another country sees it, and it has no effect on the payment window.
What to do next
Contact support from your dashboard and the team will look at the refused session with you. Send these details so they can find it:
- The error code, E-403.
- The amount you were trying to add.
- The date and time of the attempt, and the country you were in.
Keep an eye on your due amount in Settings, Billing while this is open. Once it reaches your billing threshold and your balance cannot cover it, your store can be interrupted, so it is worth contacting support early rather than after the interruption.
What this changes on your receipt
Our payment provider saves a billing address for you the first time you deposit, and the country on it comes from the connection you used that day. If that country is one the provider does not accept, Storeep saves the address as United States instead, which is why a receipt can show a country you never chose.
The country on that address decides whether VAT is added on top of your deposit, so it can change the total charged to your card. Your wallet is still credited the full amount you typed, never the amount minus tax. The address is saved once and reused for later deposits, so it does not follow your connection around.
You can change the Country field on the payment window itself before you pay, or add a business VAT number where the reverse charge applies. See Wallet and billing for the full explanation of deposits, VAT, transactions, and subscriptions.