Since August’s last week many USA iTunes customers while using the store with a Credit Card or PayPal have seen this error message out again and again, unable to buy anything or update their Apps.
Your credit card was declined. Please enter valid credit card information.
When you try to buy something (an app or song) after you login to your account, you get a new window that states:
Verification is required
You must enter your Apple ID and password, click Billing Info, and verify your payment information in order to make purchases.
And once again to log in again to verify your payment details, you get a form with red letters indicating:
You must verify your payment information before you can make purchases.
Although you do update your data, either of PayPal or credit card, and press Done, it again gives the error message:
Your credit card was declined. Please enter valid credit card information
So your credit card was rejected / denied by iTunes, even though you enter valid values in this regard. And this becomes in an infinite loop in which Apple will never accept your data or other cards, which are also valid.
Reasons
There is a theory: Reading some forums about it, most of these mistakes happen when your IP is outside of USA, meaning that even though you use a U.S. Paypal account or credit card, if you are not in the same country, you will have this error.
Some people reported this error while trying to buy something from a not U.S. country with a U.S. account, but when they called a relative in the USA to login with the same account, the error did not exist. 
Solutions
It is an error from iTunes Store and not from your bank account or PayPal. Sadly, there’s no apparent solutions . I recommend to you to read the following Apple Support forums, maybe a solution will appear there, but until now there is none:
- Topic: Credit Card is Declined
- Topic: Your payment method was declined
- Topic: Credit card verification loop
As you can see it is not an isolated error and it is happening to several customers.
Some of them recommend that the best solution is to send an email to Apple Support to the following link and wait 48 hours for a response:
Apple Support, iTunes Store: Billing, managing your account
Hopefully we will have a solution.
If you went through something similar and you solved it, please leave a comment and share your experience 
UPDATE: Once it was solved by Apple Support, after a few days the same problem returns
The first time I got the Credit Card message that it was Declines was on August 28th. I use PayPal with US address and US credit card, but I live in South America.
I sent the first email (using the form) on September the 1st. The same day Apple Support said they will find a solution and they have requested assistance.
I sent a second email on September the 3rd.
I received an Apple email saying my account was solved on September the 4th.
Yesterday (September 7) My account is having again the same problem. (and I have being buying stuff almost everyday).
I am sending a third email today (September 8).
Third email, let’s see if maybe a real person replies to this one? Getting hugely frustrated by being completely ignored.
I created a Click and Buy account – after my credit cards and paypal failed – but despite Click and Buy telling me the account is successfully connected to iTunes, it still won’t work.
The fact that I can’t even use the iTunes gift card I specially went out and bought after all else failed is the most fustrating thing to me.
The only responses I have had from iTunes customer service are two emails that the issue has been “flagged for follow-up”.
Over a two week turn around time for an issue obviously affecting a large number of people is unsatisfactory to me.
Best part about this is… I’m in Guam…. which IS THE USA, yet somehow I get this same issue… bullshit.
I have US iTunes account but stays in Korea. This problem started happening to me since today. After reading all of your comments, I am about to go crazy.
Why didn’t I just stay with Samsung? This sucks.
Im currently serving in Afghanistan and all i want is some music for my Ipod… but due to the IP crap that apple is pulling i cannot purchase anything..It keeps saying my credit card is being declined… total moral buster
Tavish…me too.
I am in Iraq and this blows. I keep checking back hoping Apple will pull their head from their A$$ but no luck so far.
My account has been working off and on since yesterday and I just got my account two days ago. I put Paypal as my method of payment and made sure that the address was the same but it still wouldn’t work.I can’t even put my country for a region because Belize does not exist as a country on Apple’s list. I have to use the US as my region. I am definitely jailbreaking my ipod touch 2G.
this problem is not only affecting US citizens – i’m Dutch, residing in Vietnam, and get exactly the same problem as described in the original blog. have emailed Apple but have not yet received any response. hope those guys get their act together quickly… this is a major turndown and dissappointment.
I’m stuck in an endless loop asking me to verify my Paypal account. No foreign IP here – I’m sitting in my own house in Austin, TX.
Just brought an iPad to my son in Japan. He was happy for 24hours and then the bs started
An update to my post of Sept. 2nd. After waiting a while for Apple to respond to my iTunes support request, they send me an email alerting me that the problem has been resolved. And since then, for the past week or so, I’ve had no problems making purchases from Japan. An interesting fact is that, although I explained to them that I was making purchases from Japan, they seemed to have no problem with that. This is despite the fact that their user agreement expressly forbids this.
2 1/2 weeks after I first reported it and dozens of emails later, I got a message saying that everything should work fine now…FAIL! I immediately sent a message back telling them about how tired I am of this crap. Needless to say, the cycle has started over and now I wait, again.
The lady DID say that this issue has been resolved with MOST customers. We’ll see.
Same issue here in Colorado, brand new iPad, credit card continually declined. Email from itunes tech support said it would take 5-7 days to fix. They must have thousands of people with this problem.
They also will not acknowledge that it’s a systemic problem. Of course.
I used Pundersnit’s method, to much success.
Since I don’t have a server in the States, I had to go screen share via iChat with someone running OS X 10.5. I signed into my iTunes (on their screen), validated my credit card, and voilà, I was good to go. I was then able to use my iTunes account successfully where I am (not in the U.S.)
I think accessing the app store from my iPad will throw a wrench into iTune’s validating process, so I plan on adding content through my computer (tried and trusted method) for the time being.
Ya, I’m from Vancouver, Canada and got this same problem too. I tried three different credit cards and all got declined (there are no problems with my credit cards – I have zero balance on them but still decided to call my financial institutions which they all say that my cards are active and in good standing!)
Just sent in a helpdesk ticket to apple so we’ll see what happens within 48hrs.