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Is this an American thing? I never get a card decline for any purchase on a credit card. Prepaid cards are another matter.

wslh 3y ago
I think so, not an American citizen but travel often to many places and remember Dell cancelling my notebook purchases ~5 times in a day (in two different years) until I call to a sales representative. I share the same experience in Dell with American citizens.
blitzar 3y ago
America and Americans have a much higher predisposition to credit card fraud than the rest of the world.
makeitdouble 3y ago
It's probably on transactions that are requested solely based on the card number, and no PIN. I got hit by these blocks with a EU card a long time ago, as the shop was trying to pass the charge with the magnetic strip. Had to phone to the VISA center to let the charge pass through on next retry. Nowadays I'd assume any "card in the machine" transaction done with a PIN would go through no questions asked, even if you're located in Antarctica on their database.
- mcv 3y ago
  This is the thing that surprises me most about credit cards: you can pay with just the information that's easily visible on the card. And you share that information directly with the merchant. Surely that's a gaping security hole? I'm not surprised they need to be paranoid about fraud, if it's that easy. When I buy something with my bank card, I always have to provide my PIN. If I buy something online, the site redirects me to my bank, where I authenticate myself with my bank's system, and then authorize the payment with my bank's system (involving 2FA), and then the bank tells the site that the payment has been authorized. The site can blindly trust my bank and can immediately ship stuff to me, because the payment will go through. I've never had any blocks nor fraud issues with this system.
zimpenfish 3y ago
> Is this an American thing? No. My (UK) bank will decline purchases if they look suspicious and send me an SMS with the information and ask me to yay/nay them. (For 4 years running, they did this for my early September purchase to Apple. Most annoying.)
- avianlyric 3y ago
  Apple iPhone release day is a right royal pain in the arse for banks. The surge of one-off high value payments causes a huge spike in false positive fraud detections, which then swamps staff responsible for performing manual checks. And that’s after we’ve already tweaked rules to prepare for iPhone day On top of all the, the fraud systems at the major card networks also go haywire. They start seeing huge spikes in high value transactions, and start randomly declining transactions. On the banks side, we can see these transactions being declined by the network, but it’s damn near impossible to stop them. The card networks themselves set the rules, and getting hold of someone technical enough to turn them off is surprisingly hard to do. Suffice to say, iPhone day each year is a bit of an all-hands-on-deck situation for bank fraud teams. You’ve got your technical teams trying to tweak rules to better detect and ignore iPhone purchases, which it much harder than it should be because Apples payment processing system is a Byzantium nightmare that creates so many different types of transactions, and uses so many merchant identities you can just do a simple “if Apple, ignore” rule. Then you’ve got your reviewer teams working hard to rapidly the all the flags so customers are impacted for too long. It doesn’t help that buying MacBooks and iPhones is a classic way for people to commit credit card fraud and money laundering. The products hold their value so well, and are so easy to shift on the second hand market, that’s it’s a prime method for organised crime groups to liquidate and launder stolen funds.
  - izacus 3y ago
    Poor guys, having to work to fix the fsck up they created themselves.
    - avianlyric 3y ago
      At the end of the day, you end up paying for fraud. The article might say that business “absorb” the cost, but that’s bullshit. Business “absorb” the cost by increasing prices, and increasing fees. Given the fraud generally effect all businesses in the same market equally, there’s little incentive for businesses to reduce fraud, because it cost all of their competitors are having to absorb, so everyone just bakes the cost of fraud into their prices.
izacus 3y ago
No, I had fun times with UK Citibank blocking my card when I tried to pay for a hotel in US as well. Nothing better than not being able to pay for a reserved room after 13 hours of travelling.

wslh 3y ago

I think so, not an American citizen but travel often to many places and remember Dell cancelling my notebook purchases ~5 times in a day (in two different years) until I call to a sales representative. I share the same experience in Dell with American citizens.

blitzar 3y ago

America and Americans have a much higher predisposition to credit card fraud than the rest of the world.

makeitdouble 3y ago

It's probably on transactions that are requested solely based on the card number, and no PIN. I got hit by these blocks with a EU card a long time ago, as the shop was trying to pass the charge with the magnetic strip. Had to phone to the VISA center to let the charge pass through on next retry. Nowadays I'd assume any "card in the machine" transaction done with a PIN would go through no questions asked, even if you're located in Antarctica on their database.

mcv 3y ago
This is the thing that surprises me most about credit cards: you can pay with just the information that's easily visible on the card. And you share that information directly with the merchant. Surely that's a gaping security hole? I'm not surprised they need to be paranoid about fraud, if it's that easy. When I buy something with my bank card, I always have to provide my PIN. If I buy something online, the site redirects me to my bank, where I authenticate myself with my bank's system, and then authorize the payment with my bank's system (involving 2FA), and then the bank tells the site that the payment has been authorized. The site can blindly trust my bank and can immediately ship stuff to me, because the payment will go through. I've never had any blocks nor fraud issues with this system.

zimpenfish 3y ago

> Is this an American thing? No. My (UK) bank will decline purchases if they look suspicious and send me an SMS with the information and ask me to yay/nay them. (For 4 years running, they did this for my early September purchase to Apple. Most annoying.)

avianlyric 3y ago
Apple iPhone release day is a right royal pain in the arse for banks. The surge of one-off high value payments causes a huge spike in false positive fraud detections, which then swamps staff responsible for performing manual checks. And that’s after we’ve already tweaked rules to prepare for iPhone day On top of all the, the fraud systems at the major card networks also go haywire. They start seeing huge spikes in high value transactions, and start randomly declining transactions. On the banks side, we can see these transactions being declined by the network, but it’s damn near impossible to stop them. The card networks themselves set the rules, and getting hold of someone technical enough to turn them off is surprisingly hard to do. Suffice to say, iPhone day each year is a bit of an all-hands-on-deck situation for bank fraud teams. You’ve got your technical teams trying to tweak rules to better detect and ignore iPhone purchases, which it much harder than it should be because Apples payment processing system is a Byzantium nightmare that creates so many different types of transactions, and uses so many merchant identities you can just do a simple “if Apple, ignore” rule. Then you’ve got your reviewer teams working hard to rapidly the all the flags so customers are impacted for too long. It doesn’t help that buying MacBooks and iPhones is a classic way for people to commit credit card fraud and money laundering. The products hold their value so well, and are so easy to shift on the second hand market, that’s it’s a prime method for organised crime groups to liquidate and launder stolen funds.
- izacus 3y ago
  Poor guys, having to work to fix the fsck up they created themselves.
  - avianlyric 3y ago
    At the end of the day, you end up paying for fraud. The article might say that business “absorb” the cost, but that’s bullshit. Business “absorb” the cost by increasing prices, and increasing fees. Given the fraud generally effect all businesses in the same market equally, there’s little incentive for businesses to reduce fraud, because it cost all of their competitors are having to absorb, so everyone just bakes the cost of fraud into their prices.

izacus 3y ago

No, I had fun times with UK Citibank blocking my card when I tried to pay for a hotel in US as well. Nothing better than not being able to pay for a reserved room after 13 hours of travelling.