My bank often blocks my card during purchases - what is the most reliable bank card? (UK)
"This question is likely to be closed as a product recommendation request. But if you are willing to change the question a bit, perhaps to ""How do I avoid having my debit card declined when I know I have good funds"" it becomes a reasonable general question. And my answer follows.  I can tell you the same thing happens to those of us with credit cards. It can happen when your buying pattern changes. Suddenly buying a lot of merchandise, especially away from home. Nothing like having your card declined while with relatives you visit or while on vacation. I'd talk to the bank and ask for advice how to avoid this. I've called my card issuer to tell them I'll in X city for these dates, to expect charges from there. That seems to work well." "Having worked in the financial industry, I can say 9:10 times a card is blocked, it is not actually the financial industry, but a credit/credit card monitoring service like ""Falcon"" for VISA. If you have not added travel notes or similar, they will decline large, our of country purchases as a way to protect you, from what is most likely fraud. Imagine if you were living in Sweden and making regular steady purchases, then all of a sudden, without warning your card was used in Spain. This would look suspicious on paper, even it was obvious to you.  This is less to do with your financial institution, and more to do with increased fraud prevention. Call your bank. They will help you." I have had my card blocked at home only rarely. One occasion comes to mind - I had bought something fairly large online late at night. No sooner had I clicked Purchase than my phone rang - the bank was asking had I actually just spent [$amount] at [$online store]? I said yes and that was that. A little later I made another purchase late at night on a different card. It went through, but when I tried to use the card the next day for something small in a store, it was declined. Embarrassed, I used a different card then called the bank. They said they had put the card on hold because of the online purchase for a large amount, even though they had let the purchase go through. They hadn't called me because it was late at night, and they hadn't given themselves any reasonable mechanisms to compensate for that (like calling me the next morning, emailing me, or the like) they'd just blocked the card. We had what you might call a frank and open exchange of views on the matter.  Not all banks use the same strategies or software. I suggest: Far and away the simplest thing is just to have more than one card so that these declines are a momentary hiccup you might forget by the time you and your Rolex are out of the store.
"Debit Cards have a certain processing delay, ""lag time"", before the transaction from the vendor completes with your bank. In the US it's typically 3 business days but I have seen even a 15 day lag from Panera Bread. I guess in the UK, payment processors have similar processing delays. A business is not obliged to run its payment processing in realtime, as that's very expensive. Whatever be the lag time, your bank is supposed to cover the payment you promised through your card. Now if you don't have agreements in place (for example, overdraft) with your bank, they will likely have to turn down payments that exceed your available balance. Here is the raw deal: In the end, the responsibility to ensure that your available balance is enough is upon you (and whether you have agreements in place to handle such situations) So what happened is very much legal, a business is not obliged to run its payment processing in realtime and no ethics are at stake. To ensure such things do not happen to me, I used to use a sub-account from which my debit card used to get paid. I have since moved to credit cards as the hassle of not overdrawing was too much (and overdraft fees from banks in the US are disastrous, especially for people who actually need such a facility)" "Others have already commented on the impact of anything which dissuades merchants from raising possible breaches, so I won't dwell on that. Maybe we need stronger legislation, maybe we don't, but it doesn't change today's answer. Often it works the other way around to what you might expect - rather than the merchant noticing and notifying Visa/MC/others, Visa/MC/others spot patterns of suspicious activity (example 1). I don't have any data on the relative numbers of who is being notified/notifying between merchants and payment processors, but at the point when your card is identified as compromised there's no reason to suppose that an individual merchant in the traditional sense has been compromised, let alone identified. In fact because there's a fast moving investigation it could even be a false alarm that led to your card getting cancelled. Conversely it could be a hugely complex multinational investigation which would be jeopardised. It's simply not safe to assume that simply ""brand X"" has been compromised, therefore everything ""brand X"" knows about you is also compromised: Furthermore there's no reason to assume the merchant has even admitted to, or discovered the root cause. MC/Visa/Banks, at the point at which they're cancelling cards simply can't say (at least not in a way that might expensively backfire involving lots of lawyers) because the standard of proof needed to go on record blaming someone is simply not yet met. So: yes it's common that you aren't told anything for all of the above reasons. And of course if you really want to find out more you may have some success with your local data protection legislation and formally make a subject access request (or local equivalent) to see what that brings back. Be sure to do it in writing, to the official address of both mastercard and your bank." Oh yes, it is absolutely the problem of the consumers. After all how is the bank to know how it should be doing business unless the customer explains it to them?  Please read the other comments about how the customer has verified receipt of some critical document and then they claim that they don't have it. Sure they are very nice on the phone, but that doesn't help when I have to take time out of my work day to call them repeatedly. I used to use Quicken, but support for that has been suspended in the UK.  I had started using Mvelopes, but support for that was suspended as well!  What I use now is an IPhone app called IXpenseit to track my spending. I use another solution: debit card with an account kept empty most of the time and another account in the same bank without any card. I keep the money on the second card-less account, and when I want to buy something, I instantly transfer the appropriate amount to the account with the card and pay. That way money is on the account tied to a debit card only for a minute before payment, and normally it is empty - so even if someone would try to fraudulently use my card number - I don't care - the transaction will be rejected. I think its the perfect solution - no fraud possible, and I don't have to worry about possibly having to bother calling my bank and requesting a chargeback, which is stressful and a waste of time and harmful to peace of mind (what if they refuse the chargeback)? I prefer to spend a minute before each transaction to transfer the money between the two accounts, and that time is not a waste, because I use it to reconsider the purchase - which prevents impulse-buying. "The UK has Islamic banks. I don't know whether Germany has the same or not (with a quick search I can find articles stating intentions to establish one, but not the results). Even if there's none in Germany, I assume that with some difficulty you could use banks elsewhere in the EU and even non-Euro-denominated. I can't recommend a specific provider or product (never used them and probably wouldn't offer recommendations on this site anyway), but they advertise savings accounts. I've found one using a web search that offers an ""expected profit rate"" of 1.9% for a 12 month fix, which is roughly comparable with ""typical"" cash savings products in pounds sterling. Typical to me I mean, not to you ;-) Naturally you'd want to look into the risk as well. Their definition of Halal might not precisely match yours, but I'm sure you can satisfy yourself by looking into the details. I've noticed for example a statement that the bank doesn't invest your money in tobacco or alcohol, which you don't give as a requirement but I'm going to guess wouldn't object to!" Debit cards with the Visa or Mastercard symbol on them work technically everywhere where credit cards work. There are some limitations where the respective business does not accept them, for example car rentals want a credit card for potential extra charges; but most of the time, for day-to-day shopping and dining, debit cards work fine. However, you should read up the potential risks. A credit card gives you some security by buffering incorrect/fraudulent charges from your account, and credit card companies also help you reverse incorrect charges, before you ever have to pay for it. If you use a debit card, it is your money on the line immediately - any incorrect charge, even accidential, takes your money from your account, and it is gone while you work on reversing the charge. Any theft, and your account can be cleaned out, and you will be without money while you go after the thief. Many people consider the debit card risk too high, and don't use them for this reason. However, many people do use them - it is up to you. You could get a prepaid Visa card. You don't need a bank account and at least here in Australia you just buy them over the counter at the post office. I believe the U.K. has a similar card: Travel Money Card Plus from the Post Office.  The card requires a UK passport or driving license. Other European countries may have similar prepaid cards but may also require resident status and electronic identity / credit inquiry. I would try to avoid mixing business expenditure with personal expenditure so a second credit card might be a good idea. That said, I did get a business credit card for my company in the UK as I didn't want to be personally liable for the money that was spent on the business card (even though I owned 100% of the business) in case things went horribly wrong. As I didn't fancy signing a personal guarantee, this meant that the limit was quite low but it was good enough in most cases. "Speaking from personal experience: I have had a credit card canceled for exactly this reason. It's happened to me three times, with two different providers (NatWest and Nationwide). After the third instance I stopped bothering to even carry a credit card. It's worth noting that all three were ""free"" cards in the sense that I paid no flat fee or subscription to get the cards. The only way the issuer could make a profit on them was through interest. I was also not a frequent user, carrying the card for convenience more than anything else, although I did make purchases on all three. So it's certainly a possibility. But I live in the UK and I'm guessing most of your other respondents do not. It may be a practice that's more common here than in the US. That might even explain the origin of the rumour." When debit cards were first made available one of the advertised strengths was that if you never wrote a check,and always used a debit card, you could never be overdrawn. They money would be instantly withdrawn from the account and the balance would always reflect perfectly the amount of money in the account. Of course some saw the loss of float as a weakness, but for others this instantaneous aspect was what they needed.  If only that were true. I have seen debit card transactions take a couple of days to appear. I have seen a $1 hold for gas not be removed and the real amount withdrawn for 2 or 3 days. Horror stories about having a $3 coffee end up costing $30 because of overdraft fees can only occur if the transactions aren't instant.  The contactless feature doesn't make the time delay any shorter. The delay for an individual transaction, assuming there are no unusual network problems, still depend on the vendor policies, the card network policies, and the bank policies. But from the viewpoint of the cashier the transaction has been completes and the customer can leave with their coffee. From the viewpoint of the bank account it may still be waiting, This link might help determining if American Express is willing to offer a card in the UK. I did it the other way around when moving from the UK to the US and getting a US card was pretty painless; I also didn't have to close the UK card, although I'm probably going to do that fairly soon. You will need a UK bank account so your employer can pay you; If it is a big enough employer their HR department might have deals with a local bank; a smaller employer might simply be able to refer you to their bank to help you open an account there. My first bank account in the UK after moving over there from Germany was with HSBC (then Midland Bank) - HSBC seems to be pretty open towards customers moving to the UK. Plus, they're pretty much everywhere. If you're planning to come back to the US and especially if you have any US-based ongoing expenses, I'd keep at least one bank account in the US open (but keep an eye on it). "I think this stuff was more valid when grace periods were longer. For example, back in the 90's, I had an MBNA card with a 35 day grace period. Many business travellers used Diner's Club charge cards because they featured a 60 day grace period. There are valid uses for this: As JoeTaxpayer stated, if you are benefiting from ""tricks"" like this, you probably have other problems that you probably ought to deal with." "There's something wrong with your story. The IBAN contiains two check digits, and the method used to compute them guarantees that any single digit error will be caught. So it's impossible that ""HSBC screwed up the last digit of my IBAN"" because if that were the case, the resulting IBAN would not be valid and be rejected by the computer when it was entered at your bank." Why not get her a credit card of her own, while she is still in the US? My experience with Canadian banks is that they were delighted to issue credit cards to I-turned-18-yesterday with no income. We did not cosign these applications. You can then give her a budget and pay up to that amount of her credit card bill each month (you should be able to do this online.) Should she overspend, she may have to scrimp for a while until your payments bring the balance back to zero. Don't delay on this though: I doubt any UK bank will issue her a card with no credit history and having only just moved to the country. And get a chip and pin if you can, they work everywhere in Europe.