3-D What?

Supposedly, it’s much easier these days to pay your way as you navigate other countries and currencies.

I remember back when you might visit your bank to get a stack of Traveller's Cheques before leaving town. There was some ceremony in this excursion which, along with the British spellings of Traveller and cheque, imparted a frisson of foreign travel anticipation. At the bank you’d sign each cheque in one space as a teller watched. Later, when you wanted to use one to pay for a swank dinner at a Paris bistro, you’d sign again in another space on your cheque as your waiter watched. If the two signatures matched, the restaurateur had a guarantee of sorts that the issuing bank would honor the cheque. They came in a variety of currency types, were no good unless signed, and could be replaced if stolen. All in all, a decent system for low-risk cash carrying abroad. How quaint.

Or course Traveller’s Cheques went by the wayside as credit & debit cards and ATMs became prevalent. Now you can probably just point your phone at a screen or do some crypto-bit-coin thing I will never understand.

Considering the worldwide integrated banking network underlying such advanced technologies, you’d think there’d be no more barriers left to paying for your vacation. But you’d be wrong. I discovered this when trying to pay the deposit for the Provence area cycling portion of our upcoming trip. The bike tour company issued an invoice through a third-party online payment outfit which works like countless others:  enter your credit card info and click the submit button. Except when I clicked ‘submit’ the system responded within a nano-second with a rejection – so fast it was clear that the transaction info didn’t even make it to my credit card issuer (CCI) for consideration. I tried several times and with a different credit card, all with the same result.

After lots (lots!) of pinging around from bike tour company, to my CCI, to google, and back again, I discovered that most of Europe has implemented a 3-D Secure protocol for authenticating online credit card transactions.  As the French guy from the bike tour company told me Ze American credit cards – they don’t so much work. I confirmed this assessment by googling and finding many exasperated Americans asking the same questions I was. 

I solved my immediate problem by wiring our deposit directly to the tour company’s bank (sheesh, talk about old school) and have since spent frustrating hours wrangling with my current CCI whose credit card, by the way, is much ballyhooed as being the best for foreign travel. They swear it’s not their fault and that their card is 3D compliant but there is no mistaking the failed transaction on the screen shot the bike tour operator sent me:  3D Enrolé?  Non

As far as I know, 3D secure applies only to online transactions so I assume there will be no issue using our credit card real-time abroad. Even so, I’m getting a back-up card (ahem good job on the 3D thing, Amex). Navigating my CCI’s customer service phone system from afar is not the kind of navigating I want to do.