Tesco & Visa Electron...

Martin_Mac

For quite a while now, people with Visa Electron cards could put up to £60 worth of fuel into their cars provided they had at least a pound in their account. If you choose the "pay at pump" option on the actual pump, it checked your account to ensure you had funds in there but would then authorise you to go ahead and fill up. It's a risky strategy but pretty safe as long as you have funds in the account the next day.

Recently I've noticed that this is no longer the case. I'm wondering whether it's my card issuer ( Halifax ) or Tesco's that have put a stop to it. I was caught out once back along but have used this method successfully on dozens of occasions where I know a BACS credit is going in the next day.

Any ideas? Does anyone else use this method??

daverave

I work for Tesco in the PFS and from August this year we have been instructed by the banks to no longer accept Visa Electron or Solo cards on the [EMAIL="Pay@Pump"]Pay@Pump[/EMAIL] facility. These cards can be used to pay in the kiosk and all other credit/debit cards will work with [EMAIL="Pay@Pump"]Pay@Pump[/EMAIL].

jonesMUFCforever

Tesco pay at the pumps were never able to check individual balances as far as I know but checked whether the card was reported lost/stolen and did a trial transaction of £1.
If it passed this you were able to proceed with filling up to £60 but perhaps losses for Tesco were more than they were prepared to accept?

savagej

I take it they were bouncing the electron payments back to Tesco as they had not be authorised for the full amount.

jonesMUFCforever

savagej wrote: »

I take it they were bouncing the electron payments back to Tesco as they had not be authorised for the full amount.

Yes it would seem that was the case.
Even today with modernised pumps Tesco will only let me have £59 with a full Visa debit card (not that my little car would take that much!) so it seems even now they are still pre authorising a £1.