I see no real purpose for the expiration other than an additional identifier, but somehow I don’t think there are more people with the same account number as I have but different expiration dates.
So why go through the process every couple of years of re-activating new cards?
Maybe the same reason passwords expire - security. I agree it is a pain, I just had to update my accounts with my new date.
It’s an additional check that you physically have the card. More recently, it means they can issue a new one with a different secret three digit number on the back, which is an additional legitimacy check.
Credit cards literally expire (they get worn out) so I am guessing it’s a measure to render your previous card unusable (in case you forget to destroy it)
True, but mine all still seem to be in pretty good condition after the relatively short couple-year window of the expiration is up.
Yeah, but the new card most likely still has the same number, and IME* if you give you CC number over the phone and just make up a date in the future there’s about a 50/50 chance it will go thorugh.
My expierence being on the receiving end of the CC transaction. That is, I have peoples CC numbers on file and if the one I have is expired, normally I’ll just make up a new date and it’ll go thorugh about half the time,* though I suppose I could just be guessing correctly.
**I do call them to update the card as soon as I get a chance.
You know that charity donation/porn site/cheese of the month club/Internet service provider/whatever you signed up for and allowed to make a monthly recurring charge to your credit card? This way, there’s a limit to how long they can keep billing you even if you forget to ask them to stop.
From what I understand, when the expiry date… expires, places like that just bump the date up 3 years or whatever, lest they receive angry calls from people missing February’s Venezuelan Beaver cheese.
Back in the '90’s, I worked on an electronic cash project at a big bank, and the issue of expiry dates came up. The “official” reasons given were:[ul][]It’s easier to replace cards on a regular cycle than to deal with hassles with worn out cards (some sigma of cards will still be at some reasonable percentage of optimal functionality)[]It means that there’s two pieces of information you need for a “card not present” transaction (like your user ID and password, for instance)It gives the issuing institution a predictable cycle for introducing new innovations, if they need/desire to[/ul]
This hasn’t been my experience. I’ve always gotten a notice, either by email or USPS, that the card I have on file is about to expire and requesting that I call or go to their website and update my credit card info.
That used to be the case. I always made up a fake date for all transactions and they always went thru until a few years ago. After that, if I didn’t use the correct date, I would get a call from the issuing company claiming that someone was trying to use my card without authorization. So at some point, they started paying attention and I wouldn’t try that anymore.
I think one reason for an expiration date is just in case…just in case your account goes bad or is closed, even tho the card may look OK for a while and might pass a cursory check, eventually the date will catch up with you and it won’t be accepted anywhere. So it’s an additional security factor for the company.
Are any purely paper-based credit card transactions (without approval by data link or phone) still possible? If so, the expiry date would cut the length of stolen-card lists.
I have had online sellers recently catch my expired cards before I did. The CC companies were slow to send replacements and the online sellers would not ship to me without an new card and code on the back. *:: Along with pictures and arrows of course. ::: * 
Most financial institutions probably don’t want to deal with the idea of having open-ended financial transactions out there. It would be a hassle for them to deal with the possibility of people putting long dormant credit cards back into use. So they put an expiration date on all cards - now they know they only have to consider the accounts that were issued in the last five years.
My guess would be it is a throw back to the days when credit cards were run through machines. Those machines would wear the cards down. I’m talking the ones that take the actual imprint of it. You would have to put the card in the machine and run the charge slip through two carbons of it.
I have had cards break in the machine (OH yeah people were happy with me for that :)) I had some cards so worn down that the imprint couldn’t be made.
Now I think the exp date probably serves as a check for the credit card company. I had Bank of America accounts that I didn’t use when BoA merged with other banks. I found upon merger BoA raised my credit limit and left the other cards.
So I never used the cards and once they expired, I got a notice from BoA saying since I didn’t use the charge card they were closing it. Since I didn’t get that notice before, I reckon they are using it as a check of some sort
Yes, but is that from the cheese-of-the-month club or the porn site?
This is in Canada, but I’ve run into one instance recently where old fashioned paper charge slips that you run through an embossing gizmo were used. The folks that I rented my TV and phone from while I was a hospital patient use them.
Both. It’s a two-for-one deal when you sign up.
One company I worked for, a dry cleaning service with free pick-up/delivery, had a team of workers (called processors) who input the information on all the incomng clothing for the day. Part of that was looking up the customer’s info and placing identfying tags on the clothes. This process also charged the customer’s credit card that we had on file for the cleaning about to be done.
When a customer’s card expired – say, at the end of December 2008 – the processor would get a denied flag from the computer, since the expiration date had passed. They then would edit the customer’s record to change the expiration date to exactly 3 years more – December 2011. Most credit cards that auto-update issue new cards with 3 years added on.
Ninety-nine percent of the time it worked, with nobody the wiser. But some customers eventually did call up to complain, as they wanted a different card to be used after the old one expired, or the credit card company would call the customer to verify the charges on an account that hadn’t been updated.
Ended up that some senior level processors got fired, since only they had been given authorization to change customers’ info. The junior ones didn’t; most of them were immigrants who barely understood the system, much less the morality of changing credit info.
There’s one other thing that no one has mentioned.
It may not be common now, but card issuers have the option of not renewing a credit card after the end of the expiration date, simply by not sending a replacement card.
(This actually happened to me back in college, when I was a bit lax about getting payments in on time consistently. I had a card with a very good interest rate–instead of raising my rate or cancelling my card, they just didn’t renew it.)