This is Terrible .... "Sorry, we don't take credit cards from Singapore"

[oneguy]

Hi guys... here's a report from our local papers ...

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The Strait Times - Singapore
Text Abstracted from http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/money/story/0,4386,175174-1046901540,00.html?
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MARCH 5, 2003

Sorry, we don't take credit cards from Singapore
Some US websites that give security advice have put the Republic on a blacklist of nations prone to online fraud

By Hugh Chow
FINANCE CORRESPONDENT
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TRY to buy something online from some Internet retailers in the United States and you may find your credit card rejected, even though you have not busted your credit limit.

This is because some US websites specialising in e-commerce retailing are advising online merchants to stop accepting all Singapore credit cards.

The reason: Singapore has been included in a group of 'blacklisted' countries seen as likely sources of Internet-based credit card fraud.

'Our advice is to just not ship to any of these countries. In the long haul, you will lose money,' says a warning on one site, www.cartserver.com

The company behind it, which provides e-commerce services to retailers, reckons the 'vast majority' of orders from some countries, including Singapore, are fraudulent.

Another site - www.mer chantfraudsquad.com - is telling retailers to check online orders carefully when the credit card information or billing address shows a Singapore connection. The website is run by The Worldwide E-Commerce Fraud Prevention Network, which has some 5,800 members including American Express, Barnes & Noble and Expedia.

It is difficult to gauge the level of influence this type of advice has within the online trading industry.

Indeed, many of the best-known US online retailers such as bookseller Amazon.com are unfazed by the prospect of this greater 'risk' and continue to accept Singapore-issued credit cards.

But some lesser-known online retailers appear to have heeded the advice.

Mr Stephane Maes-Place, 46, who runs an Internet services company based in Tanjong Pagar, was puzzled when a US-based website Go Daddy Software, which sells Internet domain names, rejected his HSBC MasterCard last year.

The firm told him it was no longer accepting Singapore-based cards because of past run-ins with online fraud.

'I was shocked and surprised because I wouldn't have expected something like this to have happened in Singapore,' said Mr Maes-Place.

When contacted by The Straits Times, a Go Daddy spokesman said that 'due to a very high occurrence of fraud', it was unable to process transactions in several markets, including Bulgaria, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, China and Hongkong.

Another website that states it will not deal with Singapore customers 'without extensive investigation and personal contact by telephone' is The Recovery Emporium, which offers services for groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous.

Internet security expert Dale Martin, who is the principal consultant at Vectra Information Security, expressed surprise that online traders were being warned about the apparent risks linked to Singapore-issued cards.

'I know that quite a few American websites won't take orders from Asia but I hadn't heard that it was Singapore specifically.'

He suggested that Singapore may have been included because of its close proximity to other blacklisted countries.

Meanwhile, credit card firms could shed little light on the matter. Visa International country manager Dennis Ng said: 'As far as our data shows, we don't seem to see this. It isn't something that is staring out at me.'

But he suggested that US-based merchants may be more reluctant to send goods to certain countries because they cannot verify the addresses supplied with these orders.

However, Mr Ng's counterpart at rival MasterCard International acknowledged the problem.

Mr T.V. Seshadri, MasterCard vice-president and country manager, said: 'This situation is not specific to cards issued in Singapore, nor is it specific to MasterCard cards. It is more a function of sales policies adopted by e-commerce merchants in various countries than the non-acceptance of a specific card.

'In the virtual world, merchants tend to exercise a greater degree of caution to minimise the risk of fraudulent transactions, as they are ultimately liable. Merchants block transactions depending on their experience of fraudulent online claims.'

He said that cases of rejected Singapore-issued credit cards were so 'intermittent' that no figures were kept on how often this happens.

According to the Commercial Affairs Department, there were 29 cases of online credit card fraud in 2001, up from 10 in the previous year.


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Copyright @ 2003 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.
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Is our reputation really that bad? In your online experience, do frauds come out from Singapore? Our government has over the years maintained a very tight hold on corruption, fraud etc. Singapore is known for its rules and regulations and certainly, if the rest of the world sees Singapore as a place where credit card fraud originate, then that would be detrimental to the reputation that our government has built up.

Comments ?

 

[Luc]

I have had several dozens sales from Singapore and never any problems or chargebacks.

Can't say that I agree with their decision, but I'm assuming
they did base it on some facts.

Hopefully, this issue will be resolved shortly.

Luc L.

 

[bidawinner]

"According to the Commercial Affairs Department, there were 29 cases of online credit card fraud in 2001, up from 10 in the previous year. "


Yeah right ! (sarcasm)

 

[.com.net.org]

Many asia countries have been blocked.

 

[mole]

Go Daddy sucks! Singapore is about as clean as you can get in the world. The government is very strict and pride themselves in tracking and cracking fraud.

 

[oneguy]

Certainly nice to hear that, MOLE

 

[ctn]

Well i think if a company doesn't want to accept it thats there right.
Its just like my bank in my home town sent me this a couple of years ago.
"We are denying credit card authorization privileges to the following countries:china,hongkong,indonesia,japan,korea,malaysia,singapore,tawiwan,thailand,turkey"
Because my bank have had so much theif and fraud with these countries going on, that it is more trouble than its worth

My mother has worked at this bank for over 30 years and said that it has gotten so bad they just had to start denying.

Sometimes a few bad apples can ruin it for everyone
Just putting my 2 cents in

 

[David G]

Originally posted by mole Go Daddy sucks! Singapore is about as clean as you can get in the world. The government is very strict and pride themselves in tracking and cracking fraud.

Yes, Singapore should not be on the list, it is very clean with a nice educated and comparatively wealthy population, with very low crime rate. They also have very strict laws such as 20 yrs in prison or even life for what is considered minor offenses in the U.S. Hong Kong is also good and should not be on the blacklist.

I have taken several software orders from Singapore, Hong Kong and other nations, with no problem. My experience is that the riskiest nation is Indonesia. I think every order I have received from there (but admitadly a small sample) was a bad credit card number.

 

[Domainaholic]

I love it when GoDaddy or others block nice Countries - more customers for me

"Sorry, we don't take credit cards from Singapore"
That is OK, others will and do

 

[alia]

Is our reputation really that bad? In your online experience, do frauds come out from Singapore? Our government has over the years maintained a very tight hold on corruption, fraud etc. Singapore is known for its rules and regulations and certainly, if the rest of the world sees Singapore as a place where credit card fraud originate, then that would be detrimental to the reputation that our government has built up.

I am in Taiwan, and we don't have a better reputation than Singapore on this subject, but I have been purchasing on the Internet for some 8 years, I have even bought several Apple computers from the US, and my credit card always works, only for a few cases( less than 5% of all) did I have to fax the copies of my ID and cc to the venders. I guess it matters what your card issued bank is, and who you are dealing with.

Sometimes, according to my personal experience, some local American companies are not as "globalized" as you and I might have assumed them to be, they have scarcely done business with customers outside their own country, nor do they really care about the customers from a nation they can't even locate on a map.

There will always be thieves, and no exception for the United States, in fact, many Asian countries have a much lower crime rate than the US. It's no subject of "reputation" of a country, it's only a temporary phenomenon in the marketplace.

 

[WildCard]

Yeah, I have sold on several occasions to people in Singapore, and they have always been fair consumers, always asked intelligent questions, essentially a pleasure to deal with.

Regarding GoDaddy, they are a great company. I have no qualms about them. But if they are going to cutoff a country like these people, when the people that do the bad stuff are going to just proxy their illicit business thru non-suspecting US cablemodem users anyways is just preposterous.

-WC-