I’ve run into the $50 limit at the pump when filling up lately. Jeff Quinton of Backcountry Conservative has an interesting post up today on the unfortunate way in which the $50 limit is being handled on debt cards.
The $50 limit is dumb and anachronistic. Fine when the price of gas was $1.50 a gallon; a lot less fine with $3.00 a gallon gas. It will probably only get worse. My knowledge of point-of-sale is dated but, as I commented over at Jeff’s, it seems to me that there are three possibilities:
- The $50 limit is configurable by station personnel (probably a supervisor functionality). The gas stations should get their acts together.
- The $50 limit is configurable but not by station personnel including supervisors. The point-of-sale tech support folks should get their acts togethers.
- Revisions to the $50 limit can be downloaded into the pumps. So why hasn’t it been done?
- The $50 limit is hard-coded. This will be a big, expensive, stupid, frustrating, time-consuming problem.
- All of the above in some degree.
Anybody with contemporary knowledge of the point-of-sale biz know what the straight skinny is?
My local gas station has a sign that says the limit is set by the credit card company, and not the gas station. Some credit/debit cards have a limit of $50, some $75. Since credit card companies get paid a % of the total sale, I doubt it will be long before this limit is raised. Unless of course, it is hard coded, then we’re stuck.
I have two different Japanese friends who experienced credit card fraud in the US, both times at gas stations (well, the fraudulent charges were made at gas stations). My guess is this is why there’s a $50 limit, since gas stations are probably good places to buy with stolen cards: high customer flow means little time for checking card IDs and nowadays a station’s mini-mart has about everything you could want to buy, especially if you’re transient or on the lam.
The last time I was in the US, I used my Japanese credit card three times in one day, the third time being at a gas station. They called me in from the pump to question me about it being my third use, thus suspicious, and asked me to show ID before processing my payment. Here in Japan, in department stores (or at least provincial ones like mine), they still take your card and walk somewhere out of sight with it to process it.