Separate payments: using two cards for one transaction

You shop online and find the perfect wedding gift for your friends and it’s on sale at a discount. You quickly push it to the cart.

Because your credit card balance has become too high, you decide to split the payment between that card and your bank’s debit card, where the balance is uncomfortably low. Seems like a good solution, doesn’t it? Probably no.

For the most part, while retailers allow in-person installment payments, they don’t accept them online. This happens for several reasons: technology and validation, mainly in the processing of the payment method.

Is split payment possible?

Most online merchants won’t let you split the payment. Online retailers may allow you to combine a gift card with a credit card when making a purchase, but they rarely allow shoppers to use two credit cards or a combination of credit and debit card to do the same. Of the 10 e-commerce retailers CreditCards.com reviewed, we were only able to find one that did so (see chart below).

“In my 17+ years of online payments, I have never seen a single shopping cart offer me the option to use multiple credit cards at checkout,” said Ray Pasinley, chief executive of payment processing company Total-. Apps in a previous interview.

While retailers are accepting an increasing number of payment forms and some brick and mortar stores accept multiple cards for a single transaction, it is difficult for shoppers to find online merchants that allow them to combine two or more cards for a single sale. Technology, security, and cost are some of the likely stumbling blocks preventing e-commerce sites from supporting multi-card payments, experts say.

Online shopping giant Amazon states on its website, “You can split a payment between one of your accepted credit or debit cards and an Amazon.com gift card, but you can’t split a payment across multiple cards.” Amazon also prohibits customers from splitting payments between credit cards and Visa, Mastercard, and American Express prepaid cards.

While Target stores allow shoppers to use more than one credit card per sale – “Our checkout counters can process multiple credit cards in a single transaction”, among other “sales with multiple payment methods”, Target states on its website that “Target.com only accepts one credit card payment per order.” However, the site allows customers to combine a credit card with 10 Target gift cards for a single order.

A company representative confirmed that Target.com does not accept multiple credit cards for online transactions and supports the use of a Target gift card plus a credit card, but did not comment on this. Amazon did not respond to a request for comment on its fee-sharing policy.

Which retailer accepts split payments?

It is difficult, but not impossible, to find US e-commerce sites that allow you to use multiple credit cards for a single order. CreditCards.com ran a spot check of 10 online stores and found only one that allows a shopper to use two credit cards for a single checkout transaction.

Source: CreditCards.com research, October 2022

Reasons Why Split Payments Are Not Common

Problems with validation

Gift cards don’t require the same verification as credit cards, Pasinli said. “The primary inhibitor is a technical problem. Merchants typically use a third-party shopping cart provider to make the checkout process easier. These carts are invariably set to accept only one credit card at checkout,” Pasinley said.

Pasinli said another issue is related to Address Verification Services (AVS), an anti-fraud tool that allows merchants to see if a submitted billing address matches an address on a card-issuing bank’s file. If the consumer uses several cards, each of them must be validated by AVS. “Writing the shopping cart code to dynamically do this would require some pretty complex programming,” he said.

Gift cards, on the other hand, don’t require AVS or CVV (Card Verification Value), so it’s easier for online merchants to accept them along with a credit card rather than multiple credit cards.

In addition, merchants expect people to receive multiple gift cards and combine them for a larger purchase, Pasinli noted. However, a consumer using 10 separate credit cards with a $2,000 limit to buy a $20,000 Cartier watch could be suspicious, he said.

Using multiple credit cards can also make the repayment process more difficult for the consumer. What happens if a consumer uses three cards at the checkout and then returns the item? “Which card is getting a refund? As you can see, things can get extremely complex once you start adding another variable to the checkout process,” Pasinli said.

Technical hurdles

Don Bush, former vice president of marketing at Kount, Inc., said in a previous interview that many merchants – both online and offline – are simply refusing to support split credit cards and multi-tender transactions due to various information technology components. necessary operations and systems.

Many systems – tax, e-commerce, fulfillment, promotion – do not support it, and when retailers need to involve multiple systems in a transaction, “there is an increased likelihood of delays, complications and conflicts that can cause headaches for both the company and the company.” and the consumer,” Bush said. “All systems must cooperate so that criminals do not exploit loopholes between systems, and working with split cards can further complicate things.

Regarding the practice of some retailers allowing more than one credit card to be used to purchase in a physical store but not online, Bush noted that in-store systems run on different platforms than online systems.

“They don’t collect as much data and can use gift and credit cards more easily.” In a “no-card” environment, in other words, an environment used in telephone or online sales, “systems are not easy to combine and fraudsters can take advantage of a large window,” he added.

Restrictions for merchants

Combining credit cards for a single purchase can also cause problems if it allows the sale to exceed authorization limits set by the retailer’s credit card provider. Pasinlee explained that merchant accounts have a maximum ticket size, “so if a merchant has a $2,000 maximum ticket, they are prohibited from splitting a transaction using multiple cards” to bypass that maximum, he said.

How to use two cards for one transaction

As noted, it’s rare to find a website that allows you to split a transaction between two credit cards, or even between a credit and debit card.

Based on blogs and online forums, some consumers have found their own ways to get around e-commerce sites’ policy of using only one credit card, mostly by using credit cards or gift cards from credit card companies to buy gifts from retailers. cards to make the desired online purchase.

Pasinli noted that in addition to online shopping carts, some industries may use multiple cards in a transaction. He said a large wedding catering bill could be $50,000, and because most consumer credit cards don’t have that limit, a consumer can use five different credit cards with a $10,000 limit each, he said, adding that split payments will also be allowed for areas such as legal services, travel, timeshare, bulk bulk bookings, commerce, and construction.