I'd like to chime in about the fraud risk stuff and why many seed banks are probably loosing their merchant accounts preventing credit card purchases.
There is no insurance, and it's highly unlikely that one competing seed bank could sabotage another. It takes much more than someone calling up and saying "oh such and such is selling cannabis seeds".
I've had a merchant account and several online companies in the past with high volume credit card transactions.
It works like this.
When the buyer disputes the charge, (it can be no product arrived, they are not satisfied etc) the seller will have whats called a "charge back" listed.
There is no insurance for this, the charge back means that the buyer gets his money back and the seller (seed company in this case) has the money deduced from his/her account along with a small fee.
The problem occurs when the seller gets to a certain pre-set limit of "charge backs". Generally there is a table, it can go by monthly activity, charge back percentage of transactions or just the total number of charge backs.
If the charge backs reach a certain threshold then the credit card processing firm may add additional ramifications. For example, the seller had a threshold of 5 charge backs per month but reached 7, now the credit card processors will allow only 5 charge backs per month and limit to 2% charge backs of total transactions.
Once those charge back thresholds are reached on a regular basis the company becomes a risk. Once your company (merchant account) becomes a risk it can and often will be placed on a fraud list by certain credit card issuers. (this is why OP can't order with his card)
The credit card issuers employee this risk assessment to minimize administrative costs of processing charge back based refunds, protect their members from high risk companies and reputation of being "safe". (You may have seen credit card companies claiming "Safe online shopping", "Guaranteed fraud protection" etc)
These strategies are put in place by banks/credit card issuers to ensure and protect their brand as well as reduce administrative costs. When seed banks or any other business have poor customer service or don't deliver it is inevitable that their charge back number will increase along with their risk assessment standing.
What many don't realize is that the buyer using a credit card is in control, doesn't matter if it's cannabis seeds or not. If the customer doesn't get the product, they can dispute the charge and now the seller must respond and most likely get a charge back.
IMO, many of these seed banks with condescending customer service reps, shitty email correspondence and bad delivery rates (bad stealth) are killing themselves.
Why I think that? For example from experience, sea of seeds has great stealth but piss poor correspondence. Every time you send an email nothing will be answered for 4-5 days. Doesn't seem like a bid deal but what if you ordered 2 weeks in the past and tracking is showing nothing?(keep in mind they explicitly tell you "you can track at anytime with your tracking number" on your receipt).
You email but get nothing back for an entire week and have already been waiting 2-3 weeks for at least an update. That would be enough for some people to just cancel the order and report to their credit card agency to cancel the transaction due to non-delivery and it would stick.
It would stick because the text sea of seeds states "thank you for your order, you can track at anytime with this number 123456" but the tracking number shows no activity, the purchase is 3 weeks old and they are not answering emails. Now sea of seeds gets a charge back which only lands them closer to be listed as a "high risk".
(I was only using SOS as example)
A monthly charge back table for the online companies could look something like this:
1-2 charge backs = refund plus $3.95 fee
2-5 charge backs = refund plus $7.95 fee
5-9 charge backs = refund plus $12.95 fee and warning of account cancellation - now placed in risk standing
9-15 charge backs = refund plus $17.95 fee warning of account cancellation and now limited to 20 charge backs per month maximum - now placed on high risk standing
20 charge backs or more account closed.
That's how it worked with my account and I'm sure the industry hasn't substantially changed.
If my assumption is correct, the reason many banks/credit card issuers will not approve purchases from some seed banks (taking in account international transaction was approved) is because the seed banks in question are in the risk category of the text in blue.
The banks that don't don't take credit cards at all have reached the threshold noted in red.
It all boils down to great customer service and getting the item to the buyer.
Some attitudes here seem to be that the customer is "lucky" to get seeds and if it takes 4 months that's just how it is. This is far from the truth, you could mail order seeds way back in the 80's and 90's. My claim is supported by those seed banks starting to sink by loosing their credit card processing abilities and general reputation. Again, I don't want to hear about some 4th party word of mouth claim that such and such seed bank was sabotaged, that's bullshit and I know from first hand experience.
just my 0.02 cents