Need to buy tickets on Turkish airline's website which require 3D secured, that means Verified by Visa / Mastercard Securecode.

Having a very miserable experience with Chase CSP last April trying to buy train tickets on SNCF, I thought I might have better luck with Barclays A+, especially Mastercard Securecode website let cardholders to register their cards, unlike Visa the verification is done during making payment.

Well, the Mastercard website kept rejecting the security ID "questions" which are just 3 basic things - CCV, Expiration Date, and last 4 of SSN. I could not get pass this screen - Mastercard kept saying the questions are incorrectly answered.

There is a contact us button which led to a screen providing a toll free number, which turned out to be Barclays security dept. While the CSR was very apologetic, he said only "a few" managers have access to Mastercard Securecode set up and of course none of them was available and he did not know when these "few managers" would be on duty, most likely not on weekend. Rep kept put me on hold then came back but all he could do was to send an email to some group which is responsible for this.

I tried some googling and found this is an ongoing issue with Barclays A+ since early last year. There were a few threads in Barclays community the posters voiced a lot of frustration on this - all the "community rep" did was to forward complaints to some "specialists" to investigate. Problem persisted, the last post I read was in Dec.

Worse, according to some very bitter posts, if you tried register but failed 3 times, your card will then be locked from further attempt, and it needs a manager at Barclays to unlock it - such manager seems to be an extreme rare bleed in Barclays...

I wonder if there is anyone reads this forum has successfully register his A+ with Mastercard Securecode?

The remaining alternative is to deal with Chase Verified by Visa (Chase would transfer you to Philippines call center where Chase security rep handed you over to a Verified by Visa rep - it was NOT a smooth process and must be done during purchase - I was timed out multiple times with SNCF site last time I went thru this so I really tried not to do this again.

Another alternative is to use an AMEX which Turkish airlines show it is accepted card, but does not show the requirement of American Safekey though it shows 3-D secure needed and list the Verified by Visa and Mastercard Securecode underneath it. According to AMEX site, US is NOT available for this feature! https://network.americanexpress.com/...twork/safekey/


Appreciate any insights / experiences anyone could post.