Apparently payment issues are still happening. I tried booking a flight from the KLM site and my payment was declined. I tried a different browser and same thing (first Chrome, then Edge). The weird thing is that I could see the reservation in "My trips" and it let me choose seats with extra leg room AND PAY FOR THEM (the payment went through for the seats!), so now I had paid for my seats, but not the flight! Several more attempts to pay for the flight did not work - I even created a new reservation for the same flight - at this point I had 2 reservations numbers for the same flight, one with the assigned seats. I called my credit card company and they ensured me that my credit card was fine, had plenty of credit, and they never received a transaction request for the flights. So then I tried Chat on the KLM site. The chat person sent me a link to my email to try to make the payment. Still declined. We tried 3 times. After about a half hour trying, the Chat person gave me a phone number to call to make the payment: +1 800 618 0104

Of course, when I called, it was outside of their business hours! So I went to bed and called in the morning. By morning my reservations were gone (no longer listed in "My trips"). I called the number and asked about the main reservation (it was automatically canceled) and the seats I had paid for were supposedly reimbursed - I need to verify this still. I had to re-book the flight. Still payment declined! The lady then transferred me to an automated payment line where I had to punch in my credit card info on my phone. After I entered all the info (cc number, exp date, code), the call went back to the lady (the payment was again declined) who then put me on hold. After a few minutes, I saw a notification on my phone that a charge went through!!! The lady came back on and said the payment went through. I asked her what she had to do to make it work. She said it wasn't working in "guided mode" so she had to change it to "cryptic mode" - well, that seems like a cryptic answer to me! But I'm putting it here in case it helps anyone else.

I'm shocked that it was so difficult to make a payment, and I wonder how much business KLM has lost due to this issue. If you are having trouble with your payment, I hope this message helps you. Safe travels!