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Why do credit card forms ask for Visa, Mastercard, etc.?

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Re: Why do credit card forms ask for Visa, Mastercard, etc.?

#11

Post by MichaelApproved »

marcusr wrote: post #4

Why do credit card forms ask you to enter the credit card number without spaces between the clusters of digits, when it's simple for the machine to parse with or without them?

I'm going to guess that the most likely reason is that a terrible progranmer or manager was behind the decision of making the customer do the extra work instead of the development team spending a little more time to parse it.

I doubt there's a reasonable explanation as to why a CC field can't contain dashes or spaces. I'd love to hear one but I doubt there is one.

Re: Why do credit card forms ask for Visa, Mastercard, etc.?

#12

Post by pbreit »

danmanstx wrote: post #6

Working for nonprofits and church's, I know we do it because AMEX and others charge higher rates per transaction than say VISA, thus some clients only take VISA and giving a select list of options, lets the user know to use that type of card.

Not taking Amex for cost reasons is almost always a bad move. First, it annoys the person giving you money (always a bad move). Second, Amex cardholder spend way more than average (frequently a bad move). They may still spend as much when asked to use Visa instead, but maybe not.

Re: Why do credit card forms ask for Visa, Mastercard, etc.?

#13

Post by pbreit »

joevandyk wrote: post #9
pbreit wrote: post #3

I think it was just a convention and made people feel better about having entered the form correctly. It makes sense to tell a merchant what type of card you are using even though someone "in the know" might know that it can be sussed from the digits. Most payment gateways still require it even though it's probably superfluous. I've also wondered why forms ask for name on card even though I'm pretty sure it's not che…

The name on the billing address is handy if you need to contact the person making the purchase.

Well, then you'd need to ask for their email or phone which I've never seen.

Re: Why do credit card forms ask for Visa, Mastercard, etc.?

#14

Post by pbreit »

marcusr wrote: post #4

Why do credit card forms ask you to enter the credit card number without spaces between the clusters of digits, when it's simple for the machine to parse with or without them?

This is extremely rare in my experience. But I suspect it's just lazy or poor programming. It's usually kind of humorous because the coding to identify the situation and display an error message could have simply been spent removing the spaces/dashes/etc.

Re: Why do credit card forms ask for Visa, Mastercard, etc.?

#15

Post by ahallock »

I think it's one of those things where convenience for those looking at the underlying data has bled over into the UI. While you can deduce the type from the number, it's not easy for humans to do that at glance while looking over SQL query results. I could be wrong, but often, we ask users for more input than we need to because elegant UIs take lots of work.

Re: Why do credit card forms ask for Visa, Mastercard, etc.?

#16

Post by ilamont »

pbreit wrote: post #3

I think it was just a convention and made people feel better about having entered the form correctly. It makes sense to tell a merchant what type of card you are using even though someone "in the know" might know that it can be sussed from the digits. Most payment gateways still require it even though it's probably superfluous. I've also wondered why forms ask for name on card even though I'm pretty sure it's not che…

Many years ago, I worked on an online donations form that did not ask this (wasn't a requirement). But soon after launch, users asked if the form was broken or missing some important part, so we added it to make them feel more at ease.

Re: Why do credit card forms ask for Visa, Mastercard, etc.?

#17

Post by smackfu »

marcusr wrote: post #4

Why do credit card forms ask you to enter the credit card number without spaces between the clusters of digits, when it's simple for the machine to parse with or without them?

Someone specced the field length and type for the database, and just said "enforce the same rules on the front-end."

Re: Why do credit card forms ask for Visa, Mastercard, etc.?

#18

Post by danmanstx »

pbreit wrote: post #12
danmanstx wrote: post #6

Working for nonprofits and church's, I know we do it because AMEX and others charge higher rates per transaction than say VISA, thus some clients only take VISA and giving a select list of options, lets the user know to use that type of card.

Not taking Amex for cost reasons is almost always a bad move. First, it annoys the person giving you money (always a bad move). Second, Amex cardholder spend way more than average (frequently a bad move). They may still spend as much when asked to use Visa instead, but maybe not.

We do stress that point, that the barrier to donate should be as low as possible. Still, some churches go as far to say donations can't/shouldn't be made on credit do to their individual beliefs, and would only take ACH transfers as they pull directly from a bank account.

Re: Why do credit card forms ask for Visa, Mastercard, etc.?

#19

Post by michaelt »

pbreit wrote: post #7
wcfields wrote: post #2

Could someone who deals with PCI compliance please explain some other nuances of credit cards that I've been curious about: * Fault/Decline Codes returned from processors like CyberSource. How are these factored? How do processors do Regex on names/addresses? [1][2] * CVV numbers and what they mean/how they are treated in the system? If CVV number is included does this increase chargeback protection? * How CHIP cards…

Checks are typically very simple, no regex-ing involved. First, names are not really checked. For addresses, usually only the number (and sometimes just first three digits) are checked as well as the zip. Generally the processor tries to decline as few txns as possible and instead deliver the information to the merchant to make a decision. The merchant can usually pre-configure error codes that it would like the proc…

Can I piggyback on this and ask an unrelated question I'm curious about?

Let's say an online merchant gets a transaction they very strongly suspect is a stolen credit card (perhaps it's from a customer with a long history of using stolen cards) but it validates just fine. Is there any provision in the interface for merchants to ask the credit card company to perform extra fraud checks, like calling the cardholder?

Re: Why do credit card forms ask for Visa, Mastercard, etc.?

#20

Post by joevandyk »

pbreit wrote: post #13
joevandyk wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The name on the billing address is handy if you need to contact the person making the purchase.

Well, then you'd need to ask for their email or phone which I've never seen.

most online purchases ask for the person's email address.

Also, you've never shopped at Amazon? They ask for the phone number for the billing address. https://www.monosnap.com/image/4QZmCDNdlsqei8BLIsjw6Z3q00tml...

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