Are you losing money from this cc processing error ?
 

I bought my daughter a visa gift card to use with her nintendo dsi game, she bought a few games and such , she went to buy a cover for it from an online site and the card was declined, everything was filled in correctly so it shouldnt have been declined , so i called up the cc company to find out what was going on. The lady explained the "pre-auth" was in us dollars and the charge came thru in candian dollars , so they held the pre-auth and there wasn't enough money left to cover the charge so they declined it, the difference was pennies. I'm sure this happens often as i'm pretty sure i have had this happen before ( but never found out why until now )

Perhaps some processors can chime in with why this wouldnt happen with them or if it would , that it will be fixed.

sponsors may want to pose this question to their processor. For the most part pornsites prob wouldnt be affected by this as the charges are relatively small and most people have enough on their cc to cover a double charge, but with a few xsales tacked on it might make a difference. For larger bills like hosts , this probably does have an effect.

that is not error for me, just some cash missiing :)

My question is why was the pre-auth in US but the sale in Canadian dollars?

Was the card issued in Canada?

Regardless, when setting up a Merchant Account internationally, the best possible solution is to do multi-currency conversion during the course of the transaction:

Example:

U.S. Merchant with off-shore account (E.U.). Japanese customer purchases using a card issued from a Bank in Japan. The processor adjusts currency in real time so it's a Yen to Yen sale. Auth/Capture occurs in currency of card origin and then is settled in currency of Merchant origin.

With some few exceptions, this avoids both a conversion issue as described above and avoids an additional line item charge for currency conversion showing up on Cardholder statement, reducing likelihood of dispute.

Occasionally, issuing banks will still charge the currency conversion percentage even though it was submitted in currency of origin because they have built their files to trigger currency conversion fees based on Merchant origin location.

not sure why.. at processors end. seems they thought about the currency conversion for payment , but the auth was notyes

I don't even think those gift cards will work with any of the big billers anyway.

This is nothing the processor can control, in your case you have a Canadian issued card and buys things i USD, then in the authorisation a booking is made on the account with a higher exchange rate to cover for exchange flucturations between the auth and the postings on the account. This is something that is done after the procossor has forwarded the transaction to the issuer.

When the final transaction is settled the exact exchange rate is determined and is often less than the auth exchange rate, in rare cases of high flucturation in exchange rates it could be higher and the issuer stands the risk that there is not enough money on the card to cover the transaction.

I believe this is the answer.

Maybe you are missing what happened, i essentially got double billed. if i was buying something for $800 and i have $1400 on my card it wont go thru, that seems pretty simple. In order for me to buy something for $800 , i basically need $1600+ to cover the purchase, because they pend 2 charges, 1 goes thru one pends for 2 weeks.

The original pend was in USD the actual charge was in CND, seems pretty simple , do the auth in the same dollars as the charge, i dont see how the processor can't accomplish this. the risk of a couple cents on the exchange rate seems paltry compared to the massive amount of people that don't have enough to cover a double purchase.

why wouldnt they ? , as far as i am aware there is no way to distinguish "gift card" from "actual card". i suppose they could be voiding out blocks of "known" cards , but this would only make sense on subscription based charges. Why would they not want people to spend money ? and what would be the difference between joe with chase visa and $50 left and frank with gift-visa and $50 left other than 4 rebills

Most (but not all of them) have no way to specify a zip code or billing address so they fail certain verification when used online.

i will make it a bit simpler example.

I have credit card with $1000 on it. i want to buy $600 dodad on yoursite.com . i cant because when i do processor asks if they can charge $600 usd to my cc , my cc says yes you can , ill hold $600 for you , then processor asks for $601 cnd , my cc says , thats not we agreed upon , you asked for $600, so i have to do a new auth , but now my guy only has $400 left because $600 is held from your last transaction. so FAIL

i dont know who's issue it is to fix, but i know everyone is losing out , i dont get my item , store doesnt make a sale and processor doesn't get a cut from the sale .. tell me that aint fucked up

all the ones i have used you register the address online so they can verify billing addy's , a few have only asked for a zip code. Either way that doesn't help anyone make the sale, as a processor i would imagine you would like to find ways to make sales not lose them.

anyways none of that is the issue here as the transaction went thru just fine other than the wrong amounts, address is not an issue. The particular card company in this scenario does require registering billing addy and has been used at many major billers before , but the issue has never come up of not having twice the amount on the card for the item , i.e. i usually had twice the money for the item being bought and so would never have been an issue or i would not have noticed because the purchase went thru