JAPANESE CREDIT CARD SECURITY TAKEN TO THE EXTREME...

Japanese banks and credit card companies take security very, very seriously. Which would seem to be a good thing, right?

Except, they often take it to such extremes that it can be super frustrating for the user.

The thing is that I travel and shop overseas quite frequently, and ever so often when using an overseas website, my card is blocked because the purchase is flagged as potentially fraudulent.

When I say overseas websites, I'm not talking about shady websites, but major airlines, reputable online stores, hotels or well-known concert or theatre venues overseas.

Most frustratingly, it happens even though I have to go through the so-called 3D secure authorisation, which requires me to enter an ID and password, on top of the card details with the 3-digit security code. Even if someone were to get hold of my card, they couldn't possibly guess the separate ID and password.

Unblocking the card can only be done during business hours and requires a long phone call speaking to an agent - in Japanese. So I prefer my wife to make the call.

However, that creates a new problem, because most of the time they simply refuse to talk to her as soon as she mentions that she is calling on behalf of her non-Japanese husband - who happens to be sitting right beside her and is listening on speaker phone...

The reason being that - again for security reasons - they insist on hearing the card holder's own voice giving them all the details they ask for, such as the credit card details, full name and address, phone number and date of birth. I guess this is just in case that a woman may have broken into my house, threatened me with a knife while forcing me to give her all those details, before proceeding to tie me up and gag me, so that she can then call up the credit card company pretending to be my wife...

Which I'm sure happens all the time, right?

The issue of a blocked card is, of course, not limited to online use, but extends also to travels abroad, which can be an even more frustrating experience.

Several years ago, when we took my in-laws on a trip to the UK, we instantly ran into trouble upon arrival, when wanting to pick up our rental car and my card was promptly denied!

This is not something you want to happen to you after an exhausting 12-hour flight, jet-lagged and eager to be on your way to your next destination...

The only saving grace was that in that instance, we had taken an overnight flight from Haneda, which arrived in the UK at the start of the day, which was still within the Japanese business hours. This meant that we were able to get hold of a human being (rather than just a recorded voice), who could thankfully unblock my card right away!

To our surprise, we were then also told that we should have called them before our departure from Japan, in order to get the security level lowered for the duration of our trip and thus avoid such trouble...

Lesson learnt.

It may be a hassle to have to call the bank and go through the whole spiel every time before an overseas trip, but as it's still less of an inconvenience than being caught out while abroad (and likely outside of Japanese business hours), we have been following this advice ever since.

But what about in the weeks ahead of a trip, when I typically buy concert or theatre tickets online, admission tickets to castles or similar tourist sites, or I may have to pay a deposit to secure a hotel booking?

As was the case the other day, in preparation for a trip to Europe in May. Sure enough, after my first purchase of a ticket for admission to a historic house in Britain had gone through and I proceeded to the next one, the payment was promptly denied...

A minute later my wife called me from the living room, asking whether I had tried to make an online purchase with my card, which made me wonder how she could possibly know that. Psychic powers perhaps?

As it turns out, at some point (which I don't remember) we must have been asked to provide an e-mail address for messages from the card company. And as they are, of course, in Japanese, we must have decided that it would be best to provide my wife's e-mail address, as she could make more sense of them than me.

But we then also found out that there is now an online method to unblock the card. Impressed with the fact that the credit card company had apparently caught up with the times and that we could avoid one of those lengthy phone calls, we proceeded with the unblocking process online.

Only to get a message that it couldn't be processed, and that we were kindly requested to call them...

Go figure.

So we went through the usual rigmarole, with my wife explaining first, but then handing the phone to me, so that I could give them all the personal details, including the phone number.

But after giving them our landline number, we were told that this was not the one on file.

So we thought it must be my mobile number. But again, it wasn't a match.

So we gave them my wife's mobile number, thinking that we may have registered that one instead. But again, the person at the other end said that she couldn't validate it...

In the end, it turned out that the number that was registered with them was my old mobile number, which had been in disuse for many years...

Once the woman was finally convinced that I was not trying to impersonate someone else or steal their credit card details, I then had my card unblocked, but at the same time complained about the inconvenience of it all. Upon which (and only after getting confirmation from her supervisor!) she offered me the option to have the security level lowered for a period of six months, providing that I check my credit card statement carefully (though aren't people supposed to do that anyway?).

So at least for the next six months I will - hopefully - be hassle-free when it comes to credit card payments abroad. Yay!