c.card verification question
 

from cafepress:

When you place an order with us, we contact your credit card's issuing bank to confirm that your credit card is a valid number and has not been reported as lost or stolen. We do this by requesting authorization for the sale. We don't actually charge your card at this time. We never charge your card for the items in your order until we are ready to ship them.

It is not uncommon for a request for credit card authorization to fail once or twice before the card is finally authorized. We will send you an e-mail if we experience difficulties in authorizing your credit card.



is this common procedure among mainstream companies?

This is common for shipping products based companies like Dell or Compaq, especially with orders in the hundreds or thousands of dollars. They call in your Visa/MC and just check if its a legit card. When the product/good ships out, it's charged then.

WG

thanks Wiredguy :-)

This is called pre-authorization, it's the same thing a hotel does when you check in for two nights at 150 bucks but they 'charge' your card for 500 and then give you the mini-bar key and the room service menu.

It puts a hold on the amount against the card for X number of days, since every type of transaction has its' own number of settlement days before it falls off if not redeemed.

In porn for instance, on a free 5 day trial that converts to a 40 dollar rebill, the 40 dollars is pre-auth'd the day the free trial starts -- no funds are taken from the customer, but the site owner has pretty much guaranteed himself that he will get his 40 bucks provided the customer doesn't cancel before the trial ends.

It's not a pre-authorization, it's an authorization. The merchant gets an authorization code, the same way anyone who accepts a credit card does.
A transaction does not get posted to your account until the merchant closes the batch file on that transaction and deposits it. If they don't close the batch within 5-10 business days (depends on the transaction), the authorization is released and the funds become available once again.

As for the verification part, merchants selling tangible goods (computers, electronics, furniture, etc) usually call the issuer's bank to make sure the name and address the buyer gave them is the same address on the buyer's credit card account. If not, they don't ship the item. In cases where the account has been taken over by a fruadster and the address has been changed, this absolves the merchant from responsibility.