No Debit
About It
As you may
know, First of America (see GSQ, November 1998) was recently
purchased by National City Corp. As is the case with most mergers,
customers were told that they would see very little difference in
their day-to-day banking activities. Nevertheless, hundreds of
customers in Michigan and Illinois saw quite a bit of difference when
their debit cards were refused by Michigan merchants.
According to
Ron Eiler, a spokesman for National City, the problem represents a
fraction of their 300,000 weekly debit transactions. But, as you can
imagine, if that fraction includes you, you don't really care that
it's just a fractionóit's still you standing in the grocery
line embarrassed because you got declined trying to purchase a loaf
of bread or a gallon of milk.
First of
America debit cardholders were still able to use their debit cards by
choosing the "credit" option instead of the "debit" option on the POS
terminal; both options would withdraw money from the checking
account. This, of course, can lead to mass confusion. "Here, just
press the CREDIT key and it will DEBIT your account."
The banks have
blamed the problem on the processors. "The reason for the denial is a
third-party processor," Eiler said. "Several third-party processors
have not been able to update their systems properly to route the
transactions."
National City
corrected the problem within a few days.
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