If your Express Entry (or PR) application fee payment keeps getting declined on both a credit card and a debit card:
- Contact your bank directly rather than repeatedly retrying the payment. The fee amount can trigger your card's transaction limit or a routine security/fraud review, causing automatic declines that have nothing to do with the IRCC payment portal itself.
- Ask your bank to temporarily raise your transaction limit for a one-time payment of that amount — banks will often do this for a single day to let a legitimate large transaction go through.
- Confirm with your bank that the decline wasn't flagged as a security review — this was the actual cause in at least one case, and simply having the bank clear the review resolved it without needing a different card.
If multiple cards from different banks are all declining, the fee amount itself (rather than the payment portal) is the more likely culprit — start with your bank, not by switching payment methods.