Card declined - no warning

eco_warrior

Contactless transactions are authorised over and over because the counter is reset when withdrawing cash which is a forced pin entry, therefore confirming the cardholder still has the card. I’ve not had to enter a pin for my contactless transaction for as long as I can remember.

kelevraz

Most banks internal procedure is to contact you once the card has been blocked. So yeh, in-between the moment your card is frozen and when you try and make another transaction, they 'should' be letting you know whats happened. From my experience though, most banks don't bother doing this, the consumer calls the bank up and it all gets sorted out.

You'll probably find that if you actually raise a complaint about it, you'll get a goodwill gesture from the bank, assuming they didn't try to contact you when they 'could have'

Stompa

eco_warrior wrote: »

Contactless transactions are authorised over and over because the counter is reset when withdrawing cash which is a forced pin entry, therefore confirming the cardholder still has the card. I’ve not had to enter a pin for my contactless transaction for as long as I can remember.

But that doesn't explain why my credit card (which has never been used to withdraw cash) is continually authorised.

eco_warrior

Stompa wrote: »

But that doesn't explain why my credit card (which has never been used to withdraw cash) is continually authorised.

Yeah I suppose with a CC then cash would be less common or not used for cash at all. The issuer will have a rule in place for contactless transactions being forced to Chip and Pin. Your usage just cant be hitting the rule.

Terry_Towelling

Stompa wrote: »

The 'consecutive contactless transactions' number has always been a bit of a mystery to me. Whilst it seemed to be around 8-10 when I first got a contactless card, after a few months it seemed to increase massively. I've certainly managed several hundred consecutive contactless transactions without being asked for my PIN. I can only assume that the banks place much greater emphasis on the nature of the actual transactions (e.g. location) to determine whether they think it's fraudulent.

Stompa wrote: »

But that doesn't explain why my credit card (which has never been used to withdraw cash) is continually authorised.

I suspect (but am only guessing) that the introduction of the Zero Floor Limit for contactless has altered the approach of many Issuers to the consecutive transaction limit. I believe the control of that number is within the card itself but don't know whether the Issuer can remotely communicate with the contactless technology during a transaction to alter it.

One thing that has happened to me is that several of my cards had an early re-issue after the Zero-Floor Limit was introduced and that may be all down to the new contactless regime.

Something else I would have a guess at is that the consecutive-transactions-limit may have some form of 'velocity' check attached to it such that where there are long gaps (days/weeks) between transactions, the counter will reset itself. That could make sense because fraud will usually take place as rapidly as possible to try and beat any 'card block'. If the card sees a long gap between consecutive contactless transactions it will probably assume it is not a fraudulent spending pattern and the longer the time that passes the smaller that possibility becomes as a stolen card would normally be blocked reasonably soon after its theft.

That, of course, ignores one of the old fraudster tricks of stealing a card and not using it for several months. They used to do this in the knowledge that the Issuer would lift the block if there were no fraudulent usage within, say, 3 months. That was also in the days before contactless and CHIP & PIN and where a lot of authorisation traffic was handled by a thing known as Stand-in Processing (STIP) but I won't go into any detail on that - you'll be relieved to hear.

splishsplash

I put petrol in the car last weekend after shopping all morning.

My card was declined and I couldn't figure out why until I got back to the car. I had received a text from the card provider to say the card was on hold until I verified the last purchase (it was for a tiny amount and I tapped without thinking).

All I had to do to unlock the card was reply Y to verify it was really me.

Seemed fair enough - it would have been seamless if I had had my phone with me.

eDicky

splishsplash wrote: »

All I had to do to unlock the card was reply Y to verify it was really me.

One of my accounts does this, very convenient, I can't remember which one, which is it..?

Stompa

Terry_Towelling wrote: »

I suspect (but am only guessing) that the introduction of the Zero Floor Limit for contactless has altered the approach of many Issuers to the consecutive transaction limit. I believe the control of that number is within the card itself but don't know whether the Issuer can remotely communicate with the contactless technology during a transaction to alter it.

One thing that has happened to me is that several of my cards had an early re-issue after the Zero-Floor Limit was introduced and that may be all down to the new contactless regime.

Something else I would have a guess at is that the consecutive-transactions-limit may have some form of 'velocity' check attached to it such that where there are long gaps (days/weeks) between transactions, the counter will reset itself. That could make sense because fraud will usually take place as rapidly as possible to try and beat any 'card block'. If the card sees a long gap between consecutive contactless transactions it will probably assume it is not a fraudulent spending pattern and the longer the time that passes the smaller that possibility becomes as a stolen card would normally be blocked reasonably soon after its theft.

That, of course, ignores one of the old fraudster tricks of stealing a card and not using it for several months. They used to do this in the knowledge that the Issuer would lift the block if there were no fraudulent usage within, say, 3 months. That was also in the days before contactless and CHIP & PIN and where a lot of authorisation traffic was handled by a thing known as Stand-in Processing (STIP) but I won't go into any detail on that - you'll be relieved to hear.

Thanks, there are some things for me to read up about there!

phillw

Brightmerchant wrote: »

That sounds sensible. Perhaps terminals could be adjusted to flash up a "Advise customer to call issuer" message to spare the cardholder the embarrassment of "Declined"?

In vegas I had my card handed back to me and they told me to phone my bank as the machine had told them to cut up the card.

All I'd done is go on holiday and made a couple of pay at pump transactions (which were pin less at the time)

The AA recently blocked my credit card after I switched the direct debit to another account after the due date and the payment showed up on the transactions. However they lie and only actually present the DD on the due date, I hadn't noticed the transaction hadn't gone out of my bank account (it takes them about 5 days to actually take it, which is very annoying). I noticed the payment failed when I logged into the app, I made a payment and it was the next day they blocked the card (payments take two days to clear).

bobblebob

Mine got declined while in Copenhagen recently in a bar. Paid contactless and it declined. Tried chip n pin and that got declined. Rang the bank and they said there is no block on the account, and in fact there wasnt even a a record of the declined transaction on their system. So no idea what was going on