Slightly worrying as things should be improved
How do these issues even happen? If the card meets MasterCardās EMV standards and has the MasterCard EMV AID, and the terminal is MasterCard EMV certified - surely that is supposed to guarantee compatibility? Isnāt that the point of testing and global payments networks?
It maybe because there are separate regional organizations for the card schemes with their own merchant rules linked to the overall global brand; there are national ATM networks such as Cirus, Plus, Link etc and card scheme owned networks; national rules on ATM or POS charges or use; international embargos on card use in certain countries; co-branded cards where one scheme is prioritised over the other in some regions; regional prevalance of EMV chip or magstrip; use of BIN directories by ATM operators and POS operators, etc. So many factors to explain issues with non domestic cards
Should BIN be basically irrelevant in the EMV world, since the AID is used to determine routing, not the BIN?
Obviously all the other factors are generally at play, but donāt seem relevant in this case. These are POSes and ATMs that generally take MasterCard and are EMV, so any compliant MasterCard should work, right? The whole point of the honour all cards ruleā¦
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yepā¦in the ideal world any MasterCard will work anywhere but that not the case. Also BIN databases still used by some ATM operators to check card acceptance and on POS for deciding charges (as domestic Mastercard and VISA normally billed at a cheaper rate than foreign Mastercard and VISA)
ATMs I know sometimes still use magstripe, but why would the POS terminal ever decide charges? Surely this is determined later by the acquiring bank when the merchant gets billed, not by the POS terminal at the time of the sale. sighs at the poor interoperability
It often not the POS acquiring bank but a third party intermediary thru which the retailer connects and that party then connects to the acquiring bank. The intermediary bill retailer using their BIN coded tariffs and that intermediary gets billed by the bank on a more normal methodology.
Some networks in Bulgaria such as UBB say their POS terminals āaccept payments with all card types, issued in Bulgaria or abroadā.
However their merchant marketing materials concern meā¦the word "opportunity"sounds to me optional:
Through UBB POS terminals you have the opportunity to accept payments with the following card types:
Visa, VisaElectron and V PAY
MasterCard, MasterCard Electronic, Maestro
ā¦
Transcard
Through UBB POS terminals you have the opportunity to utilize the following additional services:
ā¦
Offering the Visa Cash Back & Maestro Cash Back services
Very interesting, Iām wondering if thereās possibly non-compliance with the honour all cards rules hereā¦
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interesting point. I know iZettle in UK have different tariffs. One covers the major card schemes the other more card schemes are includedā¦e.g. Mastercard Visa etc versus Mastercard Visa Discover UnionPay RuPay etc. They can discriminate in that way against certain schemes. But they can not discriminate against cards within a scheme.
However I am not sure if Mastercard Europe, Mastercard US regions are deemed separate schemes or one scheme, or UnionPay International and China UnionPay as one scheme or two.
That explains why thereās some iZettle merchants (not many, but Iāve seen it a few times) that donāt take Amexā¦ I always wondered.
Many POS terminals in Bulgaria are operated by BORICA and the POS parameters coded into the terminal are submitted by banks and payment institutions via the TermReq system operated by BORICA. Maybe it is worth Monzo raising customer issues with them?
Iām almost certain itās Borica that Monzo needs to get in touch with. Last week my CA card has been refused the same way as my prepaid card before. The common denominator in all cases was Borica.
Starling worked everywhere.
Also, about that āopportunityā bit in one of your previous posts - Iād say this has been written by a fellow Bulgarian and on the principle that the more words you use, the smarter you sound 
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Iāve been using the MasterCard Debit card this holiday season and the same issues persist. The error that shows up on the terminals of some banks is āInvalid card numberā. This combined with the new ATM fees makes using Monzo abroad more of a hassle.
Do they take other Mastercards? I can think of at least two possible causes of this:
- They just donāt take Mastercard, at all.
- They donāt like the Monzo BIN.
Additionally, is this magnetic strip or chip/contactless? For chip, the card number really shouldnāt have much to do with anything, as the AID is used for routing. Itās for this reason, for example, that Dinerās Club cards often have trouble at Discover merchants in the US for magstripe, but essentially always work for chip (since the D-PAS AID is the same).
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They do take MasterCard, yes: in case that Monzo fails I use my Santander World MasterCard credit card to complete my payment. Everytime I use it with either contactless or chip and pin (Bulgaria has moved away from magstripe for some time now), so might really be a BIN issue.
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Ask Monzo support to chase them up, that sure sounds like a BIN issue. And rather poor routing logicā¦
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In all fairness I donāt think Bulgaria ever got into the whole magstripe thing ā¦
That I can believe is most probably the issue, that is something that should be reported to Borica which is the Bulgarian equivalent of Link
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