---
title: Guesty booking requests arriving without a card
description: "Some request-to-book reservations from your HomeRunner site arrive in Guesty with no payment card attached. **Why this happens.** When a guest submits a…"
url: "https://homerunner.io/docs/why-do-guesty-request-to-book-reservations-sometimes-arrive-with-no-payment-card/"
updated: "2026-10-26"
category: Booking engine and checkout
---

# Guesty booking requests arriving without a card

Some request-to-book reservations from your HomeRunner site arrive in Guesty with no payment card attached.

**Why this happens.** When a guest submits a request-to-book, their card is sent to Guesty, which then attempts to register it with the payment processor. If the processor declines the card at that step, either as a standard decline or because the card type cannot be used for that kind of purchase, the reservation request is still created but without a payment method attached. The guest does not see the decline during booking, and it does not appear anywhere in the Guesty dashboard or API response. Guesty has confirmed this cause and has stated that this is the current intended behavior of its reservation-creation endpoint rather than a defect. No change is planned on Guesty's side.

**Reducing how often it happens.** You can enable card validation in HomeRunner checkout by adding your Stripe secret key in your HomeRunner settings. This catches most declines before the request is created. However, a card can still pass checkout validation and then fail when Guesty registers it, so some requests may still arrive without a card even with validation enabled.

**What to do with each request.** Before you approve any request-to-book reservation, check that a payment method is attached. If none is present, use Guesty's built-in feature to request a payment method from the guest while they are still engaged. In most cases the guest simply had a card declined and will readily provide another one.

Still stuck? [Contact the HomeRunner team](https://homerunner.io/contact/) with your site address and what you tried, and we take it from there.