Sumant Srivathsan [29/09/08 13:59 +0530]:
The bulk of CC fraud in India happens by way of international credit cards
which are used to book tickets, but end up defaulting on payments. Most
online booking services (OTA or airline) therefore do not accept
international cards (cards issued by foreign orgs to customers with foreign
billing addresses). This problem is hardly solved by a photocopy. Also, it
doesn't solve the corporate traveler problem.
Most of the airlines use international cc .. the denial was due to fraud -
widspread use of stolen cards phished in the UK (some idiot installed a
card skimmer at a gas station he worked in, and pretty soon the stolen
cards turned up all over south east asia, india / srilanka / thailand etc)
- plus of course cards stolen from elsewhere.
The airlines started accepting international cc as fast as they could set
up support for verified by visa and mastercard securecode.
They still insist that for international cc the cardholder MUST be one of
the pax. Xerox copies of the cc for third party bookings on international
cc is streng verboten.. the airline automatically cancels the transaction
and refunds the card (and cancels the ticket) if any such transaction does
go through.
srs
