Was looking into virtual cards recently and saw halocard mention that credit cards have noticeably higher acceptance rates than debit or prepaid. Is this actually a real thing or just something providers say to upsell? I've personally never had a debit card get declined somewhere that accepted credit so I'm not sure what to make of it. Anyone actually run into this?
Is there actually a difference in acceptance rates between credit, debit and prepaid cards?
byu/Vanesa_Ever inCreditCards
Posted by Vanesa_Ever
2 Comments
been using prepaid cards for like 2 years now and definitely noticed some weird rejections at gas stations and hotel bookings that never happened with my regular credit card
There’s a real difference and it mostly comes down to how the card network identifies the card type before the transaction even goes through. Credit gets treated as lowest risk because the issuing bank is guaranteeing the funds so authorization almost always clears first try. Debit is usually fine for point of sale but I’ve had random failures with subscriptions and some international merchants that I’m pretty sure were because of how it gets routed differently depending on PIN vs signature. Prepaid I basically stopped using because too many platforms just flat out filter them at the BIN level, I think the fraud rates associated with them are why processors treat them like that but not 100% sure on the specifics.