I’ve booked a number of overseas rental cars over the past couple of weeks (for trips coming up over the next year). I wanted to use my US Bank Altitude Reserve for some of the rentals and I kept running into the card getting declined (despite the absence of a fraud alert). I’ve actually had a few other declined foreign purchases recently as well despite the lack of any fraud alert from the bank. Meanwhile, other purchases in between (both locally using Google Pay and online for domestic merchants) have sailed through. After my 5th separate attempt at booking a foreign rental car failed last weekend, I finally called the bank in frustration. To my surprise, they were able to manually lift specific restrictions that they claimed were from “Verified by Visa”, so that I could use the card for the purchase after all, which is a handy thing to know.
A declined purchase that triggers a fraud alert is usually easy to resolve
Anyone who has used credit cards extensively has run into declined purchases, particularly when making foreign purchases. It isn’t uncommon for issuers to flag foreign transactions as there is probably a higher rate of fraud with regard to foreign purchases. Some issuers are more sensitive than others in this regard; I’ve rarely ever had a foreign transaction declined on one of my Chase or Amex cards, but it happens more predictably with Capital One and US Bank.
A lot of the time, when a purchase is blocked, you’ll get a text message or email from the issuer asking to verify that you made the transaction. Usually, it is necessary to respond to that in order to unlock the card for further purchases. In other words, in my experience, when that fraud alert happens, it usually locks the card for all purchases until you respond indicating whether or not you recognize the transaction. Once you verify that you made the transaction, you can usually re-attempt it without issue.
I’m used to all of the above happening from time to time and I’m as familiar as most with that process.
However, last week I rent into a slightly different situation with US Bank.
US Bank was blocking all of my Rentalcars.com and other foreign rental car transactions
I’ve been making a bunch of travel plans lately and I booked rental cars in 4 different countries last week via Rentalcars.com (as a side note, I had a Capital One Shopping offer for 30% back. They all tracked at about 35.7% back. I don’t understand why, but I’m not complaining).
All 4 times, I tried to use my Altitude Reserve card. I did that primarily because I was curious if it would trigger Real-Time Mobile Rewards so that I could use my Altitude Reserve points at a value of 1.5c per point to erase those charges. Note that Real-Time Mobile Rewards typically requires a US-based charge, but I thought maybe it would work since I was paying Rentalcars.com rather than the local rental outfits. That has worked for me in the past with prepaid Autoslash.com rentals where I paid Autoslash (for instance, I rented from a local company in Mauritius last year, but I reserved and paid through Autoslash and I got the Real-time mobile rewards text triggered by the Autoslash.com charge). Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a Rentalcars.com transaction to go through with the Altitude Reserve. Each time, I eventually gave up and used a Chase card (which worked without issue).
Then, on Saturday, I tried a rental car at Sicily by Car (a local Italian rental company). The transaction was once again declined on my Altitude Reserve card (a side note here: Sicily by Car offered Dynamic Currency Conversion so that I could pay in US Dollars — for a fee of 3.9% and a poor conversion rate….no thanks! I wanted to pay in Euros).
A painless “double bypass” did the trick
After my Sicily by Car transaction was declined without any fraud alert present (same as with the Rentalcars.com purchases), I called US Bank. I was mildly annoyed since the US Bank Altitude Reserve, which is not currently available for new applicants, is a travel rewards credit card that carries Primary Rental Car Collision Damage Waiver (CDW) and the card has a $400 annual fee. I felt like I shouldn’t be having so much trouble using it to pay for travel (in this case, to rent a car) overseas.
Again, I didn’t have a fraud block on the card. I’ve used it in between rental car attempts to pay for other things without issue, including a couple of overseas hotels that required large deposits. Because of this, I thought that calling the bank was probably going to be a waste of time. Since there was no fraud alert and I couldn’t see any charge attempts on the card, I expected a phone agent would tell me that they didn’t see any charge attempts and that they would subsequently point the finger at the merchant. I’ve been in enough of those situations where each side points the finger at the other that I figured the call would be a waste of time. I was on a deadline to pay for the car (that’s a separate story about how Sicily by Car takes the booking and you can’t pay for it until they confirm it). Nonetheless, for the sake of science, I called US Bank.
The first agent quickly transferred me to someone in the security team.
To my surprise, that agent could see all of the declined transactions (none of them showed up in my credit card login, but she could see them in the back end system, including merchants, dates, and amounts). I was glad that she could see all that!
I don’t really believe this, but the agent told me that US Bank blocks Rentalcars.com “because it’s a foreign company and there are too many instances of fraud”. Again, I don’t necessarily believe this, but that was her claim.
When I pushed back and said that this is a premium travel card and she’s essentially saying that I need to use a card from another bank for Rentalcars.com, she said that she could do something on her end to make it go through if I really wanted (um, yes!). Rather than go back and cancel and rebook the Rentalcars.com transactions, I was actively trying to pay for the Sicily by Car rental, so I asked for help with that.
The agent went on to claim that the issue on foreign rental car sites is that it requires “3D by Visa” verification and that’s why it wasn’t going through. That is indeed the name for Verified by Visa’s latest fraud prevention system. However, it’s dubious as to whether specific merchants or the entirety of foreign purchases are subjected to additional scrutiny (for what it’s worth, I didn’t need any verification at all to use a Chase Ritz card at Rentalcars.com and I wasn’t getting any request for verification from my US Bank card for either Rentalcars.com or Sicily by Car, the transactions just kept getting automatically declined). However, the phone agent said that she could do something to manually to bypass the extra Verified by Visa verification and she asked me to try Sicily by Car again.
She could see almost as quickly as I did that the transaction still got declined again (before I even told her that it got declined). However, it’s notable that the messaging was different this time — it showed up as a “warning” and specifically said to contact my bank (and the declined messaging used different wording than the previous declines). It seemed like perhaps the previous declines came from Visa and that whatever bypass the agent had done was telling the system not to use Verified by Visa but rather to pass the charge through directly to US Bank.
The agent said, “Well, I could open you up completely” and then said she did a “double bypass” to allow the transaction (and perhaps any transaction?) to go through. She advised me to try again. That did it — the Sicily by Car charge went through with whatever she called a “double bypass”. She said if I run into a similar situation again, I should call and they can manually bypass whatever filters caused the transaction to be declined. I probably won’t bother calling every time I want to rent from a foreign company over just using a card from another bank that offers similar rental car protections, but it was good to know that they could manually make it work when the transaction was getting blocked!
So, again, the moral of the story is that if you want to use the Altitude Reserve for an overseas rental or other purchase and it is getting declined, call the bank. An agent can manually loosen restrictions on your card. I imagine that may not be limited to US Bank. That’s annoying and inconvenient (and has been unnecessary in my experience with other issuers), but it’s good to know nonetheless.
Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
A few months ago, I had a different problem using my US Bank Altitude Reserve card for a car rental overseas. I was already abroad, and I needed to reserve a car in Chile for a different upcoming trip. It was with an Avis affiliate (EMSA), and they were offering me a discount if I paid in advance (free cancellation, but I had to prepay). It was for a busy travel period, at a good price, and I wanted an automatic transmission (still scarce in some parts of Chile), so it was definitely in my interest to reserve the car. The EMSA website transferred me to a secured payment site, but the site wanted me to enter a verification code sent to my phone. The problem was that I was abroad using a SIM card with a different phone number, and didn’t have access to my regular phone number’s texts. For many of the reasons you state, it was really best for me to use my Altitude Reserve. I contacted EMSA by whatsapp to explain the situation and, fortunately, they agreed to “hold” the car for me until I returned to the US and could recieve the verification text and complete the payment. A couple weeks later, I returned to America, went to the EMSA payment site to pay with my card, and — from America — the site just took the payment WITHOUT even wanting verification! I could tell other stories about these new, occasional verification hassles using US credit cards abroad. It’s really a shame how “technology” and “security” are now actually making my travels a little more difficult.
A solution to that situation is to use a Google Voice number since the text would go through to your email. You may not want to do that, just suggesting that it is a way to make sure you can get the text even when you’ve got a different SIM in your phone.
A lot of words to make a simple point..
You can theoretically do this online for up to 90 days, but I have errored out the few times I’ve tried and I had to call.
I don’t use this card for anything other than Apple Pay / Google Wallet. Never been declined anywhere in any country.
Same. Used USB Altitude Connect card around Asia but only with Apply Pay, no problems at all.
USB is not an international bank and I would hesitate to use the card overseas. Citi, Chase, BofA never had a problem.
We were in Brazil last week and I typically bring a bunch of different cards to ensure no issues but this time only brought cards that I need to spend on which were Ink Preferred, Amex Aspire and Amex Biz Plat. Ink kept on getting declined maybe 18 out of 20 attempts. Aspire was 50/50 and Biz Plat never once declined. Luckily everyone accepted Amex Biz Plat via Apple Pay and the likes. It almost seems like Amex Biz Plat would never decline (like that recent article of AA charging 26mil for a ticket on Amx Plat).
I think Brazil is a center for credit card fraud. My Chase Sapphire card alerted after I was there with a genuine fraud warning. Heard similar stories from others.
US banks rarely participate in 3DS verification texts. They just respond to the merchant that 3DS is not supported for the card in use.
Capital One works perfectly with getting 3DSecure verification texts from European merchants.
Chase, on the other hand, is in the same boat as US Bank – fail a transaction, call thr bank, get transferred to an offshore Indian call center to verify the transaction manually and retry. So annoying.
The real problem with cards being denied in other countries is that they may attempt to text you or want you to call them, but you might not have good or any cell service, even with Google Fi, in order to carry that out. Most cards have also done away with trip notifications, but I think US Bank still offers that feature, so I wonder if that would matter in this situation.
I was in the United States the whole time — I was just trying to book cars via Rentalcars.com and then Sicily by Car for trips abroad later this year.
The EU requires merchants to use 3D Secure for online payments, and as your post highlights, there’s still quite a bit of variability in its implementation at American banks. When implemented properly, you should be prompted to enter a verification code sent via text message in a pop up window with your bank’s logo (other methods also possible), and then the transaction should proceed. It sounds like US Bank, rather than choosing to properly implement it, has chosen to simply deny all attempts, whereas other banks might just allow all attempts without verification.
A key thing to underline for other readers is that front line customer service agents may not see any attempted charge, because you never passed 3D Secure, leading them to say that “it must be a problem with the merchants website”. They may not even be aware that 3D Secure is a thing since it’s not really used in the US. You need to emphasize that this is a problem with 3D Secure which is a security protocol implemented by Visa/MasterCard, and that if they (the agent) can’t see the charge attempts, you need to speak to someone who can, which is usually someone in the fraud department. Worth noting though that I’ve also spoken with people in fraud who were also unfamiliar with 3D Secure and didn’t know where to look, and didn’t get anywhere until I escalated.
This would be a reason to consider PayPal if it’s a payment option (though I’m not a fan of the company), as it does seem to avoid 3D Secure verification.
This is happening with other banks as well, most notably bank of america (the air france card in my case). They too are claiming a ‘problem with verified by visa” and.i had the exact same experience as you including.no pending charge shown but they could see everything on the back end. The problem is you cannot get a customer service agent on the phone at bank of america. Also had the same problem on the air france web site. This is impacting many foreign web sites using whatever new visa verification algorithm that just does not work.
Hey Nick,
Related to international rental car bookings, the one time I did it in Tahiti in 2019, I was told I needed an international drivers license from AAA. Do you ever get international drivers licenses and been asked to show them to anyone before or during a car rental?
Interesting! We didn’t need to show one in Tahiti (I think we went around 2019 also?).
We rent overseas all the time and in all of our travels, the only place I ever recall being asked for an international license was Taiwan. The first time we went to Taiwan, nobody would rent to us without it, so we ended up unable to rent a car. So the next time I went to Taiwan, I got one ahead of time.
I usually don’t bother getting one, but have probably 2 or 3 times total. I think I got one before our Flying by the Seat of our Points challenge in part because I didn’t know where I’d end up and didn’t want to run into a problem because of it. But in dozens of countries we’ve been fine with just our home driver’s licenses. In Niue, they require you to get a local license. You just pay for it at the police station. And it isn’t required that you do it before they give you the rental car, you just have to do it “at some point” while you’re there.
Thanks for sharing. We flew French Bee premium economy from SFO-PPT, rented a car, and took the car ferry to Moorea in June 2019. I call it the poor man’s Bora Bora, but we enjoyed our overwater bungalow at the IC Moorea. That’s the only time I got the International Drivers License but I can’t recall if they even asked for it when we picked up the rental car. I guess a valid US drivers license is sufficient in most international locations.
This March, I had plans to go to Bora Bora and stay at the Westin since I found a few dates that were under 65K points / night and within range of the 50K Marriott FNCs. But we decided to skip that trip and go somewhere else. Hoping you can find biz seats to PPT 🙂
I’ve got two there and four back so far — waiting on the other two seats to materialize :-).
The more effort you put in to look for those seats, the luckier you will be. I’m convinced that the person who tries the hardest to find the award seats will always get them. Just need to be patient and pounce when the alert comes through.
I had the same issue. You have to make the call and keep them on the line as you have the worker run the transaction again. I’ve had them tell me several times that they don’t see anything as being attempted. But finally one bank worker told me to try while she was on the phone and sure enough it popped up and she was able to approve.
The culprit is 3D secure, MasterCard secure, etc. I only realized this because that’s where my purchase for a Japanese railway pass kept failing. It was probably the only site that has ever indicated that it was going to use MasterCard secure, but then timed out and gave me an error.
This is very helpful information as I am thinking of adding a U.S. Bank card to my Chase, Amex and Cap1 ecosystem. My Chase cards have worked for me internationally, the only rejection was using it to pay for a Vietnam eVisa online (card not present transaction), so I used my Amex card instead and it worked. Your experience is a perfect example of why we need to travel with cards from several issuers.