If you got a credit card, you most likely got an expiration date written on it, which you must give to any website you want to pay to. On many websites, submitting transaction to the credit card processor costs money, and to avoid paying money for nothing something that will fail anyway, many stores will apply some checks beforehand, including luhn check and expiration check.

Now here’s the thing, as far as I can tell, when we implemented our store, our credit card processors didn’t give us any information about expiration date. The documentation explains how to submit a transaction, and not how to check for credit card informations validity (probably because they want us to submit it to them – and pay – in every case). I guess it’s the case for many other online stores. Now here’s the catch: I believe most shops do not know the exact rule behind the expiration date. Some will consider a card expired on the first day of the expiration month, some on the last day…
They are both wrong. I my card is expiring this month, I asked my credit card company and was told that my VISA card is expiring 30 days after the last day of the month written on it. An “expired card” is still valid for 30 days, however it will not work on some online shops which implements extra checks by themselves.

Now I’m stuck for one month on a card which doesn’t work on some stores, and started receiving “please give us your new card” emails from some subscriptions I have.

Anyway this “30 days after” rule isn’t documented anyway in the doc from our credit card processors, so I guess writing about it somewhere can be a good idea.

Tags: Credit Card, Payments, VISA