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I have had some curious but unpleasant experience with my debit card and want to know if someone's familiar with the problem.

Basically, I got my VISA debit card from the UAE but lives in the US at the moment. Recently, my card has been declined at stores and ATMs when I tried to make payments or withdrawals. The screen says "invalid transactions", whatever that means.

When I called my bank, they said as far as they could see, my card is not blocked in their system. What's even weirder is that the card works perfectly fine with online payment, which kind of proves my bank's point. But it is indeed declined - so who's declining it along the chain of authentication and how can I resolve this?

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  • In this case, we probably need to know the countries involved if we are going to speculate on the answer. – Nathan L Dec 11 '18 at 22:55
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    What type of purchase are you attempting, pinless debit, debit with PIN, signatureless VISA, or signature? Transactions processed through the VISA network (like credit cards are) usually expect a zip code, which US cards have but yours may not. But your symptoms sound like VISA transactions are working and debit ones not. – Ben Voigt Dec 11 '18 at 23:14
  • Maybe see this Wiki page about card numbers. The leading digits of a card number indicate by whom, and often where, a card was issued, and according to that page, "Online merchants may use IIN lookups to help validate transactions. For example, if a card's IIN indicates a bank in one country, while the customer's billing address is in another, the transaction may call for extra scrutiny." so maybe some stores (or their processors) see the card as "unusual". – TripeHound Dec 12 '18 at 8:38
  • Did you try swiping the debit card on the US credit card network? i.e. ask the merchant to swipe this as a credit card. – Dheer Dec 12 '18 at 9:38

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