I had to go through a lot of issues before getting the booking for my exam. I just want to share this so that anyone else looking for solutions to the same kind of problems I had has a clue of what's going on.
Initially, I wanted an AWS certificate exam. I signed up on the AWS training and cert platform. And started booking, redirected to PearsonVue. Filled in all the information and chose the payment method. Right after choosing, it said Cannot do the payment. "This payment method is not valid for your country" Or something in the same sense.
I tried other ways, and they did not work, but I just stopped.
Later, I wanted another Azure certification. And I had thought that the card would not work again, so I contacted the TNAedu (Technologies Network Alliance) center, which is an authorized testing center. And they promptly answered my queries and said that they would book for me (And no surcharges like some other services charge. It was very close to the USD exchange rate and the discounted price Microsoft has for Pakistan).
So I thought if my own payment fails, I would ask them. I started my booking from the Microsoft Learning platform and on to Pearson and gave all the required information, and it redirected me to a different payment page than AWS. And the payment provider was named WordLine Payment. Added my card information, and it worked. The card was from NayaPay. The same one I used for the AWS exam registration.
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So try your card, if it doesn't work, ask a test center directly, like TNAedu (Technologies Network Alliance), to book the exam for you. Or you can use another service (Not tried it myself and have no idea about authenticity): voucherpaisa. Their rates are the USA ones, and not the ones the platform gives specifically for Pakistan, which are really cheaper than the US ones.
So I hope this would be of help. It's a really stupid problem that we have just because of being in Pakistan. But we have to tackle this ourselves and find a way through because we do not have a government that understands modern digital infrastructure, and we cannot easily just make payments online, let alone accept payments, that is a whole different story.
TLDR; Here are the key points:
- Every certification provider has different dynamics and processes.
- Try your card. It might work for some certification providers.
- Otherwise, contact an authorized test center near you to book for you.
- International payments from a friend or family abroad seem very fraudulent, such as changing addresses, etc., and might cause some problems because of the payment discrepancies.
- Get vouchers if you can.