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Most of the reasons credit cards get declined are tied to either a damaged magnetic stripe or a temporary technical issue with a retailer’s payment system. But there are some circumstances when that happens because the account associated with your card was frozen.
And for that there are at least seven good reasons. Some of those reasons are within your power while others not. Fortunately, there is also a backup plan for nearly every situation.
First reason may be linked to fraud alerts. Usually credit card issuers use automatic software to detect out-of-the-ordinary transactions. So, if they sniff something suspicious, they would block your account with no further warning.
But there are a series of algorithms that these programs use when choosing to tag a transaction as questionable. Two of these algorithms are extremely expensive purchases and purchases made in foreign countries. For this reason you should tell your card issuer about those unusual transactions before doing them.
The second reason you may get your bank account frozen are defaults. Make sure you pay all your credit card bills if you wish to further use that means of payment, experts caution. Nevertheless, card issuers usually do not block an account because of a single missed bill, but they often do it after missing two. You can contact the issuer and call for a compromise if you pledge to pay your debts as soon as possible.
The third reason you may end up with an unusable credit card in the most inopportune moments is linked to the primary holder. If primary holders cancel their account, card holders who depend on that account will see their credit cards rendered useless. There isn’t much you can do about that, but you can still see the balance and payments in the user’s online profile for a few months.
If you use a card associated to another person’s bank account such as your employer or parents, those people can cancel your privileges over the account at any given moment. So if you ruled out all other possibilities you should contact the owner(s) of the account when you see your credit card frozen.
Another reason credit cards are rejected is linked to exceeding credit limit. Usually, you can only exceed those limits upon request and under some conditions. Otherwise you should expect your credit card to be rejected whenever you try to make purchases that exceed your credit limits. A simple solution would be to make a quick payment to your credit card issuer to extend those limits. But, reaching your credit limits may seriously damage your credit score. So, be careful.
Other times your credit card gets rejected because you suspended your account because you couldn’t find it or you suspect it was stolen from you.
And the last most common reason you may see your purchasing power being seized by your credit card issuer is when the issuer performs a financial review of your account by analyzing your tax statements. As soon as the review is over, you should be able to get back to shopping.
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