Trolled by a banklink

A consulting client approached me today, asking about some problems. Well it was eyebrow-raising, so to speak.

Apparently banklinks in the UK (specifically – Worldpay) let you pay for goods using credit and debit cards, easily. You are like card number and pin away from spending whatever the amount the card holds. No names, surnames, addresses or anything like that is verified. Hence, people are using stolen card info to buy stuff (who would’ve thought). Then the service provider ships out the stuff, or provides the services. Few weeks after that – the payment is rolled back, because of the reported theft. The owner got his money back, the thief got the goods and the provider has neither goods nor money.

So, long story short, my client asks me, how do you deal with this in Lithuania? Wait, what. There are no such problems, because paying on the internet via cards is only marginally available. Like 1% of the shops has it. Personally I have never seen it, yet I suspect they exist. Everyone uses electronic banking services and banklink basically fast forwards you to your banks system.

Wow, replied the client, that’s like 5 steps forward already. We only recently stopped using checks by the way.

Checks? Seriously?