Mizter T wrote

I strongly suspect he is referring to UK Switch (now branded Maestro)
cards which until very recently were issued with (I think) a 19 digit
principal number. UK issued Maestro cards are now being switched over
to the 16 digit standard.

I got my replacement (NatWest) Switch/Maestro with chip&pin and 16
digits in December 2005 so hardly "very recently".

Did anyone get a chip&pin card with other than 16 digits ?

--
Mike D

On Tue, 01 Apr 2008 12:47:00 +0100, David Cantrell
wrote:

On Fri, Mar 28, 2008 at 09:36:05AM -0700, Ianigsy wrote:

Yes again- having spoken to somebody who works in the fraud risk
department of a bank, the UK is only just moving to a system of having
the same number of digits in a debit card number as the rest of the
world.

Uhh, the only card I've ever had that didn't have 16 digits was ... a
visa credit card (Barclays, 13 digits), many years ago.

My first Barclaycard did as well, had it in the late 90s.

Neil
--
Neil Williams
Put my first name before the at to reply.

On 28 Mar, 16:29, Mizter T wrote:
On 28 Mar, 15:59, Adrian wrote:





On Mar 28, 2:05 am, MIG wrote:

On Mar 27, 10:09 pm, (Neil Williams)
wrote:

On Thu, 27 Mar 2008 13:43:15 -0700 (PDT), Mizter T

wrote:
One of the attractions of credit cards is that problems such as
fraudulent use can be sorted out easier using a credit card as opposed
to a debit card - and if your current account is cleaned out it will
likely cause you more grief *to get things sorted out than if it was
just your credit card that was fraudulently used. Credit cards also
offer extra legal protection for purchases of goods or services that
cost =A3100+.

This is exactly what I use a credit card for, and is exactly why I
avoid the use of a debit card where possible. *It always gets paid off
at the end of the month, and I have not yet omitted to do this, thus
the convenience comes to me free of charge[1].

I noticed that TheTrainLine now charges for credit cards but not debit
cards.

That's a good reason not to use TheTrainLine I suppose, because I
always used my credit card in the way described above.

Would they actually know if you quoted a Debit Card number in place of
a Credit Card one?

Yes. AIUI debit cards use a different number range to credit cards.
Whether companies elsewhere in the world would be able to instantly
tell the difference between a UK issued debit and credit card is
another question.

Several companies (in the UK and elsewhere in Europe at least) either
charge a premium for using a credit card (notionally to cover the
extra costs), such as TheTrainline, easyJet and Ikea, or don't accept
them at all, such as the discount supermarket Aldi (and Wikipedia
states that this is the case for Aldi stores in the US as well [1]).
Until only a few years ago Marks and Spencer didn't accept credit
cards.

The number range must also be referred to by supermarket (and pub)
tills when it comes to allowing "cashback" or not.

On 28 Mar, 17:15, MIG wrote:
On 28 Mar, 16:29, Mizter T wrote:





On 28 Mar, 15:59, Adrian wrote:

On Mar 28, 2:05 am, MIG wrote:

On Mar 27, 10:09 pm, (Neil Williams)
wrote:

On Thu, 27 Mar 2008 13:43:15 -0700 (PDT), Mizter T


The number range must also be referred to by supermarket (and pub)
tills when it comes to allowing "cashback" or not.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

There is a summary at

http://www.barclaycardbusiness.co.uk/docs/binranges.pdf

In message
, at
09:29:38 on Fri, 28 Mar 2008, Mizter T remarked:
AIUI debit cards use a different number range to credit cards.
Whether companies elsewhere in the world would be able to instantly
tell the difference between a UK issued debit and credit card is
another question.

I would be astonished to discover that there wasn't a standard ecommerce
plug-in that identified the kind of card (along with the one that
everyone uses to ensure the checksum is OK). Even if the seller doesn't
deploy one, their merchant services must, so they can tell who to send
the charge to.
--
Roland Perry

On 28 Mar, 17:26, Roland Perry wrote:

In message
, at
09:29:38 on Fri, 28 Mar 2008, Mizter T remarked:

AIUI debit cards use a different number range to credit cards.
Whether companies elsewhere in the world would be able to instantly
tell the difference between a UK issued debit and credit card is
another question.

I would be astonished to discover that there wasn't a standard ecommerce
plug-in that identified the kind of card (along with the one that
everyone uses to ensure the checksum is OK). Even if the seller doesn't
deploy one, their merchant services must, so they can tell who to send
the charge to.


One would think that likely for big ecommerce companies, but perhaps
not elsewhere.

I've certainly heard about people using some of the basic debit cards
- Visa Electron and Solo (i.e. the one's that need online
authorisation) - with companies and retailers that notionally
disallowed them, and I'm not just talking about railway booking
offices or ticket machines either. This led me to think that sometimes
perhaps the card number range filtering is implemented badly (or not
at all) by some retailers.

Additionally if retailers are not using online EPOS systems (i.e. if
the details all get sent in batches every so often - or even if the
card is processed manually, old-school style) then the merchant
service provider's systems won't necessarily get a chance to reject
inappropriate cards (if the EPOS machine doesn't already have an
appropriate filter installed).

I'm sure I'm using all the wrong terminology but you catch my drift!

In message
, at
11:31:02 on Fri, 28 Mar 2008, Mizter T remarked:
I would be astonished to discover that there wasn't a standard ecommerce
plug-in that identified the kind of card (along with the one that
everyone uses to ensure the checksum is OK). Even if the seller doesn't
deploy one, their merchant services must, so they can tell who to send
the charge to.

One would think that likely for big ecommerce companies, but perhaps
not elsewhere.

It wasn't the size of the e-commerce company, but the size of the
organisation producing the e-commerce module. To take an extreme
example, someone can be a really small company selling on eBay, but you
get the benefit of Paypal's card processing. I wouldn't expect any small
company to be writing their own card processing software, any more then
they write their own spell checker.
--
Roland Perry

On Wed, 02 Apr 2008 08:23:42 +0100, Roland Perry wrote:

In message
, at
11:31:02 on Fri, 28 Mar 2008, Mizter T remarked:
I would be astonished to discover that there wasn't a standard
ecommerce plug-in that identified the kind of card (along with the one
that everyone uses to ensure the checksum is OK). Even if the seller
doesn't deploy one, their merchant services must, so they can tell who
to send the charge to.

One would think that likely for big ecommerce companies, but perhaps not
elsewhere.

It wasn't the size of the e-commerce company, but the size of the
organisation producing the e-commerce module.

I wouldn't expect any small
company to be writing their own card processing software, any more then
they write their own spell checker.

In some countries they can't 'roll their own'. In Australia for example,
the bank's regulations for handling on-line card transactions are so
onerous that most sites just use a broker to handle all that bit 'off
site'. The banks naturally offer such services for your site....

You could roll your own, but proving to the banking industry that it
works to their requirements is reasonably difficult, and if they don't
think you comply, they won't handle your transactions.


--
Matthew Geier

In message
Adrian wrote:

On Mar 28, 2:05*am, MIG wrote:
On Mar 27, 10:09*pm, (Neil Williams)
wrote:





On Thu, 27 Mar 2008 13:43:15 -0700 (PDT), Mizter T

wrote:
One of the attractions of credit cards is that problems such as
fraudulent use can be sorted out easier using a credit card as opposed
to a debit card - and if your current account is cleaned out it will
likely cause you more grief *to get things sorted out than if it was
just your credit card that was fraudulently used. Credit cards also
offer extra legal protection for purchases of goods or services that
cost =A3100+.

This is exactly what I use a credit card for, and is exactly why I
avoid the use of a debit card where possible. *It always gets paid off
at the end of the month, and I have not yet omitted to do this, thus
the convenience comes to me free of charge[1].

I noticed that TheTrainLine now charges for credit cards but not debit
cards.

That's a good reason not to use TheTrainLine I suppose, because I
always used my credit card in the way described above.

Would they actually know if you quoted a Debit Card number in place of
a Credit Card one?


Yes, from the number series.

--
Graeme Wall
This address is not read, substitute trains for rail.
Transport Miscellany at http://www.greywall.demon.co.uk/rail/index.html