Online purchases in France refused as card is detected as from UK

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I have had instances of the online purchase from French companies being refused e.g. from Oscaro.com (using BNP Paribas) and from batteryset.com (using Caisse d’Epargne).

The problem is they detect the card as a UK pre-payment card. When I queried batteryset they wrote Vous réglez avec une CB spécifiée « Angleterre » et la banque ne garantit pas la transaction

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Basically they are too worried about fraud and say the card doesn’t support 3D Secure so the bank is not “guaranteeing” the transaction and they don’t want to take the risk.

Sadly this is extremely common in France with most small businesses using awful legacy acquirer banks that allow them to put such restrictions in place.

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Well that is something Monzo is working to support in future. However my impression is that the time-scale is more in the by the end of the year kind of thing…

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A more recent post says ‘in the next few months’ so closer to this end of the year than the far end hopefully!

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One issue, and I don’t support this at all, but at least to try and be understanding, is how card not present liability works. By default, it is with the merchant, and only successful 3DS can put it on the bank.

Compare this to card present, where the least secure party is liable (e.g. if a shop supports chip but the issuing bank only supports magstripe, the bank is liable. If the shop only supports magstripe but the bank supports chip, the shop is liable. If the parties are equal, liability defaults to the bank).

3DS should work the same. A shop should only need to attempt 3DS to be protected from liability, if an issuer doesn’t support it, liability should go to the issuing bank since they’re the less secure party. But unfortunately, that’s not how it works for card not present.

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I totally understand why they’re doing this, but I still believe that they should just accept some chargebacks as the cost of doing business and providing a better UX.

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Oh I’m completely opposed to them doing it. I’m just trying to show some understanding. The reality is that when they chose to accept Mastercard, they chose to accept the contractual terms that go along with that… Including honouring all valid Mastercards. But I doubt we will see enforcement action over this any time soon since we haven’t yet…

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