In message
, at
01:33:42 on Wed, 2 Apr 2008, Mizter T remarked:
If you were in France I believe it's compulsory to carry ID.

I don't think it is actually, either for French citizens/residents or
for visiting foreigners.

I know someone who was hauled to the police station (for going shopping
in FR without ID). It may be a second order thing like "you have to be
able to prove who you are" (it's like that in NL). ID is one of the few
ways to do this.
--
Roland Perry

On Wed, 02 Apr 2008 08:23:42 +0100, Roland Perry wrote:

In message
, at
11:31:02 on Fri, 28 Mar 2008, Mizter T remarked:
I would be astonished to discover that there wasn't a standard
ecommerce plug-in that identified the kind of card (along with the one
that everyone uses to ensure the checksum is OK). Even if the seller
doesn't deploy one, their merchant services must, so they can tell who
to send the charge to.

One would think that likely for big ecommerce companies, but perhaps not
elsewhere.

It wasn't the size of the e-commerce company, but the size of the
organisation producing the e-commerce module.

I wouldn't expect any small
company to be writing their own card processing software, any more then
they write their own spell checker.

In some countries they can't 'roll their own'. In Australia for example,
the bank's regulations for handling on-line card transactions are so
onerous that most sites just use a broker to handle all that bit 'off
site'. The banks naturally offer such services for your site....

You could roll your own, but proving to the banking industry that it
works to their requirements is reasonably difficult, and if they don't
think you comply, they won't handle your transactions.


--
Matthew Geier

Mizter T wrote

If you were in France I believe it's compulsory to carry ID.


I don't think it is actually, either for French citizens/residents or
for visiting foreigners.

"All required to carry ID" was announced on the newpaper travel pages
about 1999 (as an anti-terrorism measure).

Whether it is still the case I don't know

--
Mike D