Help & Resource Center

Can't Proceed to Checkout- TLS issue

Question

We just had the 5th caller in 2 days complaining that they could not proceed from shopping cart to checkout on our website. Some are using Safari and some are using IE.

 

Answer

Checkout is a secure website, and this issue arises when the person's browser is not set to use the correct security settings.

They may receive an error like the following:

The customer will receive this kind of error when they try to navigate to any secure site. Their browser is not set to use the most recent protocol for secure sites. (TLS)

Transport Layer Security (TLS) and its predecessor, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), are cryptographic protocols designed to provide communications security over a computer network.

If the browser is not set to use this protocol, the user will get an error when trying to access a secure site.

For more info, read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Layer_Security

Following is information on how to adjust the security settings.

Internet Explorer

To enable these settings:

  1. Select Tools > Internet Options.

    NOTE:  Depending on your IE settings, the "Tools" menu may be a gear icon in the upper right hand corner.

  2. Go to the Advanced tab.
  3. Scroll down to the Security section.
  4. Locate and check Use TLS 1.0

    If your browser has additional TLS options, such as TLS 1.1 and TLS 1.2, these should also be selected.

  5. Press the OK button.

    You may need to close and reopen all open browsers in order for these new settings to take effect.

Safari

Although most recent versions of Safari are using this by default, older versions are not.

From Wikipedia:

As of February 2015, the latest versions of all major web browsers support TLS 1.0, 1.1, and 1.2, have them enabled by default. However, there are still problems on several browser versions which are not the latest, but are still supported:

  • TLS 1.1 and 1.2 supported, but disabled by default: Internet Explorer (8–10 for Windows 7 / Server 2008 R2, 10 for Windows 8 / Server 2012, IE Mobile 10 for Windows Phone 8)
  • TLS 1.1 and 1.2 not supported: Internet Explorer (6-8 for Windows Server 2003, 7–9 for Windows Vista / Server 2008), Safari 6 for Mac OS X 10.8

Therefore, if you are using an older Safari 6 version, you may experience this issue, and you will need to update your browser.