Card Payments on a Plane

Mine were fine as I used one of my credit cards.
They were using Revolut or one of the other Fintech cards (Monzo/Starling).
I have Revolut Visa / Maestro but wouldn’t attempt to use them on a plane.

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The cabin crew are likely on commission; so they will want to spend time on people that can actually transact. They weren’t actively blocking the fintech cards; just noting they were unlikely to work (based on prior experience) and then asking if they had any other cards if they didn’t.

The airlines have likely just calculated that it’s cheaper to decline the business from those who can’t obtain offline debit cards or credit/charge cards than install new infrastructure to accept them.

Are they?

I doubt that really.

At one point, it was company policy on EasyJet and Ryanair to actively block certain cards and cabin crew were expected to enforce it.

Clearly they have, but this does discriminate between customers unfairly and, consequently, is most likely in breach of their contracts with Visa and Mastercard (which require all cards to be accepted equally).

Would agree there’s no commission element, these guys get shipped around the world and live in hotels frequently. Doubt there’s anything but a good salary involved in that.

So what would happen if you paid with a card that had £0 on it - no overdraft facility just e money

I do know some cabin crew, and while they are not actually on commission, the are expected to meet sales targets.
This applies much more to the LCC than the legacy airlines though.

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Such cards can, in limited circumstances, go overdrawn.

The provider then asks you to immediately top up to return to a positive balance. If you failed to do so, your account would be closed/frozen.

The provider may then attempt to pursue you for the money but, given the probable sums involved, is unlikely to go much further.

I would still be concerned about credit reports and potential CIFAS flags from that, though, so it wouldn’t be advisable!

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Of course the airline can decline to take cards that the card scheme requires positive authorisation (X2X) and their card terminal can operate offline.

If they were to accept the transaction, they would be subject to chargeback by the card issuer. An airline isn’t interested in pursing holders of X2X / prepaid cards as they are likely throwing good money after bad; they want cards that are honoured by the issuer.

There was definitely some incentive (commission/sales targets) as they were very keen on sales of perfume, cosmetics and things such as tobacco.

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That’s why I said they shouldn’t say:

If there is a genuine technical limitation, that’s one thing - but if there isn’t and they have just arbitrarily banned cards that is not. As I said before, at one stage this arbitrary banning of cards was going on (including some cards capable of offline authorisation).

Ryanair pressurises staff to make sales, and you are assessed on your ability to sell as well as your competence in the cabin.