Card processing money limits

[deniser]

A card was tried on my site first for just over £500 and declined by the cardholder's bank. It was then tried again for just under £500 and went through.

Putting all other factors aside (don't worry, I am an expert on the indicators of fraud!), is this suspicious in itself or is normal for a bank to have a £500 limit on a card for an internet transaction?

It is a Visa card in Europe (not UK).

[davidshaw89]

I've never known this to happen.

All I can think of is that somewhere in between the two amounts, the maximum credit limit (or bank balance for debit cards) was met and the bank refused the larger amount due to insufficient funds.

[AndyP]

Yes, I agree with David...that would seem to make the most sense. As you, I'm sure, will already know if the first transaction was declined on the basis of a security flag that would have been it until the card holder contacted his bank etc.....simply hitting the cards credit limit seems the most sensible reason.

[Burden]

Sometimes when i worked in the travel agents if the card wasnt used for amounts like the transaction it would get us to contact them for some security questions

[AndyP]

yes, but that doesn't really explain why one transaction is declined and another for a lower amount is accepted.....certainly in my experience if you get a decline for anything other than creit limit reasons then its blocked until it is manually unblocked.