required info for internet credit card transactions

Factual Questions
1

Wife discovered a fraudulent transaction on her credit card tonight. Someone had purchased a $1 trial membership with a credit report monitoring company, presumably just to test whether the card was valid before spending big bucks. The issue has now been dealt with, but it got me curious about exactly what information is required in order to complete a credit card transaction.

I visited the credit report monitoring company’s website, and went through the motions of signing up. I got to the payment page, and they ask for credit card number, CVV number, expiration date, and name on the card.

I’ve seen transactions get declined before for having the wrong expiration date, and of course they won’t go through without the correct CVV number. Do they really require the name on the card? The only reason I ask is that whoever applied for the trial membership used some other name for that membership, so I wonder if they even had my wife’s name (as it appears on the card) at all.

2

They can and do check with the issuing bank that the name, number and expiration date match. They can and sometimes do ask you for your name and address and check that with the bank. Twice I was denied credit (once in the NY subway and once at a gas station in northern Vermont where this issue must arise regularly) because I could not provide a valid 5 digit zip code. And my US cell phone company will not allow to pay by CC for the same reason, so I end up mailing them checks. Besides all this, Air Canada requires that you set up something called a secure code with the CC company. So when I am buying an online ticket I am sent to the bank web site where I enter a UID and password and then returned to the AC site. So merchants can use all sorts of protections, whatever they want. NY city subways going to all that trouble for a $20 purchase is a bit over the top, IMHO.