3 ms·
This new years, I made a large liquor store purchase (about $600) in Manhattan, not in my normal geographical area. The transaction was declined, but all I had
by cft 11y ago
This new years, I made a large liquor store purchase (about $600) in Manhattan, not in my normal geographical area. The transaction was declined, but all I had to do was to answer "yes" a text that I got from the issuing bank, and then swipe again. Was I "profiled"? Yes. Did Visa do a good job protecting me and itself with my profiling? Yes. Try running a real business with this purist approach. You will exceed 1% chargeback threshold in the first year, and your payment processor will either shut you down or will require a huge collateral.
- panic 11y agoYeah, I think this is an appropriate way to do profiling. The declined transaction was explicitly tied to something you did, so you understood why it happened. The bank also provided an easy way out. Where profiling becomes dangerous is when it's tied to something you are or something you did in the past: it can be harder to identify why you're being profiled in these cases. Most of these cases aren't resolved through a single text, either. Profiling is a useful tool, but we have to be careful to do it in a humane way.