Authorize.Net CIM: Error on checkout: "You cannot add more than 10 payment profiles."

This error means Authorize.Net rejected the transaction because the customer already has 10 credit cards stored on their CIM profile. This is the maximum number Authorize.Net allows. The only way to eliminate the error is to go into the Authorize.Net account and clear out some of those payment profiles for that customer.

This generally occurs under the following scenarios:

1. A customer checks out repeatedly as a guest, with small variations in their billing address. Even though it may be the same card, a new payment profile is created because of those variations. Differing inputs like ‘Street’ vs. ‘St’ or ‘Boulevard’ vs. ‘BLVD’ or even differing capitalization or punctuation will cause a new payment profile to be created. We recommend having the customer create an account as opposed to checking out as a guest. Since they will have a saved billing address, that will make the many profiles error much less likely.
   
   
2. An admin is using one email to place guest orders. Since CIM profiles are recognized by customer ID and email address, that would cause all entered cards to be associated to one CIM profile. Go into Authorize.Net to remove payment profiles related to that guest email, or use distinct email addresses for guest orders to prevent further issues.
   
   
3. A customer legitimately has used 10 different cards to order within the last 120 days. If this occurs, the only option is to remove one or more of that customer’s payment profiles via Authorize.Net.

In some instances Authorize.Net may refuse to merge identical data into the same payment profiles, which can lead to identical duplicate entries. Some stores or customers may also not wish to enforce login or stored address information. In order to bypass the 10 profile limit in these edge cases, you can perform one of the following:

• Swap to using the Accept Hosted form solution via the configuration setting "Payment Form Type".
• If you are on version 5.2.0 or newer, you can enable "Use multiple CIM customer profiles" when using Accept.js.

Please note that using these methods may impact some ERP systems that rely on how certain information is stored in CIM, primarily due to customers being more likely to have multiple customer profiles rather than a single customer profile with multiple payment profiles.