Quote:
Originally Posted by Apache
It is always the issuer of your card that approves or declines the sale. When your card is physically inserted or swiped into a charge machine or entered into the correct fields on a web page, it is not the company you are buying from that approves or declines the sale. If that was the case retailers would never decline a sale. A retailer can ask for an override in certain situations, but if it is a fraudulent sale the merchant is responsible for the loss. If the merchant follows all of the required steps in accepting a charge sale, and it is fraudulent, then the card issuer takes the loss. I was a merchant for 30 years. How would I ever know whether to decline a sale or not. Merchants are not allowed access to any personal or financial information of any card holder. It is illegal and against the rules of your merchant agreement. Unless you are the cardholder merchant services will not give you any reason for declining a sale. So kcladyz is correct in his statement.
Apache
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Card's are declined for a number of reason, ranging for insufficient funds to suspected fraud. Depending on card issuer, the suspected fraud can get triggered for a lot of reasons - you haven't used the card in a while, you haven't bought anything at that store before, you usage pattern might trigger something (i.e. a number of online purchases one after another).
My bank has a very quick fraud trigger finger. I've had a number of purchases declined with an email from the bank about 5 minutes later asking "did you try to make this purchase" If I click yes, then I can try again and the purchase will go through. It's annoying and can be a bit embarrassing(since a lot of people simply assume that purchases are declined for lack of funds), but it's just the way credit cards work these days.