MemoryStone |
Things that I keep... ...and some that haunt me late at night. |
A regular merchant could never post a settlement against an unactivated card as this is a principle barrier against merchant fraud. But the issuing bank, who usually also runs either an enhancement business unit, or contracts for one, OWNS the cardholder masterfile. By masking out the activation character position in the master file by means of a COBOL program,they can run the enhancement sales orders against the master file and ‘force post’ the enhancement product sale. The pretense is that this is valid and legal because the customer indicated a desire to purchase the enhancement, even though the product is an enhancement against a non-active account.
