Payment & Security Policy.
Valerive — operated by S Commerce, Nieuwegein, the Netherlands — wants paying for a dress on valerive.com to feel as effortless as choosing one. This page explains exactly how your payment is taken, who processes it, how your card details are protected, what happens if a payment is declined or disputed, and how our checkout meets UK and Dutch/EU payment law.
Every way you can pay at checkout
All prices on valerive.com are shown and charged in British pounds (£), and our checkout accepts the following payment methods. Every logo shown is the trade mark of its respective network or provider and is displayed only to show which options are available to you.
Digital wallets (Apple Pay, Google Pay, Shop Pay) draw funds from a card already saved to your device or Shopify account, so the same card network rules and protections described in this policy still apply behind the scenes.
We take your order. A regulated processor takes your payment.
Valerive does not process card payments on its own servers. Instead, every transaction on valerive.com is handled by Shopify's payment infrastructure (including Shopify Payments and, where relevant, Shopify's underlying banking and processing partners), which is built to the same standards used by regulated payment institutions across the UK and EU. When you check out, your payment details are sent directly and securely to that processor — they never pass through, and are never seen by, S Commerce's own systems.
Because a specialist, regulated processor handles the transaction itself, your payment benefits from bank-grade infrastructure, fraud monitoring and compliance obligations that go beyond what an individual online shop could provide on its own.
We receive confirmation that your payment was authorised, the amount charged, and a masked reference to the card used (for example, the last four digits) — never your full card number, PIN, or card security code.
How your payment data is protected
We rely on several layers of protection, most of them enforced by our payment processor rather than built by us directly, which is by design — payment security is a specialist discipline best handled by infrastructure built for exactly that purpose.
Every page of valerive.com, including checkout, is served over an encrypted HTTPS connection using TLS, so information you enter is scrambled in transit and cannot be read if intercepted.
Our payment processor is certified to Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) Level 1 — the highest tier of card-data security certification, reserved for the largest processors of card transactions.
Where a card is saved for a faster future checkout, it is stored by our processor as an encrypted token, not as a readable card number, so the underlying card data is never exposed even to us.
S Commerce does not collect, view, or store your full card number, expiry date, or card security code (CVV/CVC) on our own systems at any point. This information is captured directly by our PCI DSS-compliant payment processor and is never transmitted to or retained by Valerive.
Why you might be asked to confirm a payment with your bank
Under PSD2, card payments made by customers within the European Economic Area are generally required to use Strong Customer Authentication (SCA), most commonly delivered through 3D Secure (3DS2) — the "Verified by Visa", "Mastercard Identity Check" or equivalent step you may see during checkout. Because we currently ship only to the UK, this most often applies if your card was issued by an EU or Dutch bank; UK-issued cards follow the closely aligned SCA regime set out under the UK's own Payment Services Regulations 2017, as amended.
The panel alongside shows, in simplified form, what happens during this step.
How a 3D Secure check runs
This sequence repeats automatically to illustrate the flow.
Why a payment might not go through
A decline happens at your card issuer or our payment processor, not on our side, and rarely means anything is wrong with your Valerive order itself. Common reasons include:
The most common reason for a decline, resolved by using an alternative card or method, or contacting your bank.
A mistyped card number, expiry date, security code, or billing address that doesn't match the one held by your card issuer.
If the Strong Customer Authentication prompt from Section 4 times out or isn't approved on your banking app, the bank will decline the payment as a safety measure.
Some banks automatically block unfamiliar international or online merchants until you confirm the transaction is genuine by phone or app.
In rare cases, an order may be held or declined by our fraud-prevention checks described in Section 6, pending manual review.
You are welcome to try again immediately with the same card, a different card, or an alternative method such as Apple Pay, Google Pay or Shop Pay. If a payment continues to fail, please contact your card issuer directly, as they hold the specific reason for the decline; we are not shown this detail ourselves.
Keeping fraudulent transactions off our site
Alongside the fraud tools built into our payment processor and each card network, we apply our own layer of screening before an order is dispatched:
Every order is screened by our processor's fraud-detection systems, which assess signals such as device information, IP location, order pattern and card history in real time.
Address Verification Service (AVS) and card security code checks confirm the billing details match those held by the card issuer before a payment is approved.
An order flagged as high-risk — for example an unusually large order or a mismatched delivery and billing address — may be held for a manual check by our team before dispatch, and we may contact you to confirm it.
Getting your money back, on the original method
Where a refund is due under our Refund Policy — for example an approved return, a cancelled order, or a faulty item — the refund is always issued to the original payment method used for the purchase. We do not issue refunds to a different card, account or method than the one used to pay.
Or your cancellation/refund request is approved by our team.
Processed within 5–10 business days of approval, to your original payment method.
Once issued, most UK banks and card issuers display the refund within 3–10 further business days, though this is outside our control.
You will receive an email confirming the amount refunded and the method it was returned to.
If a refund hasn't appeared after this window, please check with your bank or card issuer first, as the funds are often already released on our end; if you're still unsure, email support@valerive.com and we'll trace it.
If you don't recognise a charge, or something's wrong
Most payment concerns are resolved faster, and more simply, by contacting us directly before going to your bank — we can usually issue a refund or explain a charge within our standard reply time, without you needing to raise a formal dispute.
Email support@valerive.com or call +31 6 26269395 with your order number and a description of the issue. Our customer service team is monitored 24/7 by email, and we aim to reply within 5 hours.
If you do raise a chargeback with your card issuer, we will respond to it through our payment processor with evidence of the order, delivery and any communication with you. Chargebacks raised for an order that could have been resolved through our own returns process may take longer to settle than contacting us directly.
If you paid by UK credit card for an item costing over £100 and up to £30,000, you may have an additional right to claim against your card provider under section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 if there's a problem with your order. Debit card and lower-value credit card payments are not covered by section 75, but may still be eligible for a voluntary chargeback under your card scheme's own rules — contact your card issuer for details of how this applies to your card.
Where our responsibility ends and our processor's begins
Because your payment is handled by an independent, regulated payment processor rather than by S Commerce directly, we are not liable for outages, errors, delays, security incidents or service interruptions that originate on our payment processor's, card network's, or your bank's own systems and are outside our control. This does not affect your right to a refund or remedy under our Refund Policy where an order itself was faulty, incorrect, or not as described, nor any statutory right you hold against your card issuer or bank directly.
Every law behind this page
S Commerce is established in Nieuwegein, the Netherlands, and currently sells exclusively to customers in the United Kingdom. Payment services regulation applies at both the UK and EU/Dutch level, so this policy is written to satisfy both.
| Law / Standard | Jurisdiction | What it does for this policy |
|---|---|---|
| Payment Services Regulations 2017 (as amended) | UK | The UK's implementation of payment services law, regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA); sets out Strong Customer Authentication requirements and payer protections for UK card transactions. |
| Revised Payment Services Directive (EU) 2015/2366 (PSD2) | NL | The EU directive underpinning Strong Customer Authentication (3D Secure) for cards issued within the EEA, supervised in the Netherlands by De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) and the Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM). |
| PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) | UK & NL | An international security standard, not a national law, that our payment processor holds at Level 1 — the highest tier — governing how card data is transmitted, processed and stored. |
| Consumer Rights Act 2015 | UK | Gives UK consumers statutory rights around goods being as described, of satisfactory quality and fit for purpose, which underpin the refund rights described in Section 7. |
| Consumer Credit Act 1974, section 75 | UK | Gives UK consumers who pay by credit card for goods between £100 and £30,000 equal liability protection against their card provider, referenced in Section 8. |
| Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 | UK | Requires timely refunds and clear information about payment, pricing and additional charges before a UK consumer completes an order. |
| Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002 / BW Art. 6:196c | UK & NL | Requires clear pre-contractual information about payment methods and the technical steps to conclude a contract on our checkout. |
What we actively monitor, and how we keep this up to date
We review this Payment & Security Policy at least every 12 months, and sooner whenever we change our payment processor or accepted methods, or when UK or Dutch/EU payment law is updated, including further FCA, DNB or AFM guidance. The version in force is always the one published here, dated at the top of this page.
Illustration of the categories our processor and our own team continuously monitor.