On Tue, 20 Mar 2012 16:18:00 -0500, Stephen Sprunk
wrote:

On 20-Mar-12 14:51, Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 14:39:59 on Tue, 20 Mar
2012, Stephen Sprunk remarked:
Credit cards

Under 18s can normally only get a credit card as an additional
cardholder – for example on a parent’s credit card account. This age
group are not usually granted access to credit themselves because,
under existing legislation, under-18-year-olds do not have the
capacity to enter into a contract, which is a pre-requisite for a
credit product. Some credit card companies, however, will not give
credit cards to under-18s even as additional cardholders.

Charge cards

The same rules apply to charge cards as to credit cards.

Unfortunately that last part is completely wrong (which is an issue
because it's the very thing this thread has been about).

Charge cards are non-revolving credit cards. Normally, "credit card"
refers to the revolving subset.

Solo and Electron (and now VISA Debit) are precisely the debit cards
which *are* given to under 18's in their own right in the UK.

The above doesn't discuss debit cards, only credit and charge cards.

oops. Here's what that page says about debit cards:

Debit cards

These are only issued when linked to a bank or building society account,
usually a current account. As under-18s do not have the capacity to
enter into a contract, banks and building societies do not usually
permit this age group to have an overdraft. Some debit cards, such as
Solo or Visa Electron, require all transactions to be authorised against
money already in the account, which prevents the cardholder going
overdrawn.

How does the merchant know that any given card presented requires
authorization?

According to Wonkypaedia, all Solo and Electron transactions
require(d) authorisation :-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solo_%28debit_card%29


Is this the floor that folks have mentioned recently
elsewhere in the thread, and is such encoded on the card itself?

For US cards, AFAIK there is no floor encoded on the card; the floor is
set by the card processor depending on the merchant's chargeback
rate--and never exceeds USD 50. The merchant is guaranteed to get at
least that much without having to authorize each transaction--even if
the issuing bank declines it. They will typically authorize any
transaction over that amount, though, which wouldn't work for totally
offline terminals.

S