The trouble is, the POS terminals are NOT reliable. In Moscow, they very often cannot get a conection to the authorisation centre, and the banks here simply REFUSE to make a manual call. Believe me, I have gone through this in intense detail with the people at Visa, and there is no improvement whatsoever.
I also use Visa as a way of transferring funds cheaply to my relatives in Georgia, and down there, there is never a problem.
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by MoreMiles:
This might be the case a few years ago. I just got back from a trip there few weeks ago. All transactions are approved in real time using Point-of-Sale terminals. This was not something available to most merchants there a few years ago. They are everywhere now. So most stores will take any V/MC in Taiwan these days.
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Originlly posted by russellt:
[QUOTE]
We use credit card cash advances a a cheap way to send money to our relatives in Moscow Russia. We just add them to one of our visa / mc accounts as an additional user and they go to Moscow banks and do cash advances with a 3% mol fee. It is the cheapest most convenient money transfer we can figure out. Never had any refusal. [QUOTE]
[This message has been edited by Dr. Zhivago (edited 08-28-2002).]
[This message has been edited by Dr. Zhivago (edited 08-28-2002).]