Quote:
Originally Posted by MaxPSC
The location does matter, but not the one of your payment processor but the one of the acquiring bank they are using.
If the acquiring bank is in the USA and your customer (cardholder) has a bank (issuing bank) in the UK for example, the payment can be rejected due to that location issue.
There are 3 zones for online payments that are determined by the distance between the acquiring bank and the issuing bank.
- local zone: same country
- intra zone: same continent (EU zone for example)
- inter zone: international
The issuing bank sets a daily and a monthly limit for the cardholder. The limit is higher for "local" payments, then lower for "intra" payments and finally even lower for "inter" payments.
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This is the correct answer.
In practice, if you have an Euro merchant account, it can happen that some US/Canada cards are declined (by the cardholder's bank, not by YOUR bank!) because trying to do a sale out of US/CA. Then the "best" would be to send US/CA guys to US/CA merchant account etc., still there are some other protectionistic and silly rules about SPECIFIC banks, in fact we see all the time guys being declined by 1 biller then approved by another in strange order (no scrub on OUR end... only in card end). It also happens that cardholders are PHONED immediately by the bank after the declined with a scary question: "Was it you who tried to do a card sale of $XXX in europe a minute ago?", and the guy should approve this. It even happens that EVERY next sale even in same day, the guy is declined and gets a new call (can't pre-approve stable)... now tell me if this is an efficient, fair and internationally open system...