UKC

Whilst in Brussels last weekend I used my Visa Debit card about three or for times for things like meals and shop purchases.

I'm a bit surprised that these haven't yet shown up on my bank account. I drew some cash out at an ATM the morning we were leaving (Monday) and they appeared the next day. I always thought card transactions were quicker than a week, even abroad.

Interested to hear any other experience.

In reply to mypyrex:

From my experience its fairly common. Some retailers aren't fully connected and only check to see that the card is not blacklisted.

In reply to Indy:

They were all done through e terminals so I would have thought it would have been fairly quick.

In reply to mypyrex:

I asked a few years ago and was told that international transactions are much much more complicated than most people think insofar as it depends on the company that owns the terminal what service the retailer is paying for how it patches into the the national banking system then the international one. Maybe some else has a more detailed explination.

In reply to mypyrex:


The card machines I have used in the past (15years ago) required a "cashing up" type procedure at the end of the day which sends the finalised payment request to the bank that provides the machine if not done before close of banking hours it will drop to the next day. Some people who dont take a lot of card transactions may only do this every few days, having said that more modern machines probably dont need this procedure anymore. The bank then processes this payment with your card issuer. So delays can creep in due to procedure of different banks (they may bundle up foreign currency transactions to reduce conversion losses) and even timing issues (transaction arrives just after a batch window)

Ive found quite a few times in europe that transactions have taken a week or so to show up.

In reply to All:
Thanks for the info.