Apparently not! I see your point on this, but I still don't think of it as being unfriendly to expats. UA has set up systems in place to optimize for regional differentiation, charging more where they can get away with it, less if it serves their competitive needs at the time. That's the only reason I can think of for not taking your credit cards for the purchase.

You managed to trip a fraud trigger, not really fraud but something that tells them not to do what you're trying to do because it's likely someone buying a ticket for someone else through the "wrong" channel. Which, apparently, is the case, since UA determines what the right & wrong channels are.

It is kinda screwy that you could do an award ticket for them, but not a paid ticket. At least I think you can.

This isn't completely different from things that happen in my business. Trek, my primary bike line, doesn't allow mail-order bike sales. The customer has to be physically in the store to buy the bike (after which they can arrange to have it sent somewhere, if they wish). There is no way around this; Trek does it primarily because, especially on expensive bikes, there's a lot involved in terms of getting things fit exactly right, assembly, after-sale check ups and the fact that, if Trek allowed dealers to sell outside their area, there'd be less incentive for local dealers to stock expensive bikes. And I'm constantly getting phone calls and emails from people who want to throw money at me for bikes I can't sell them, and sometimes they get quite vocal about their displeasure. To them, it makes no sense. To Trek, it does.

Look, I'm just explaining why it might make sense as policy. But I could be completely wrong believing that it's anything other than just a UA screw-up, unintended consequences of a change in operational systems or something.