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.

There's only a few people at Barclay's who can setup SecureCode, it's a joke. BUT IT CAN BE DONE.

It really is a JOKE considering it is a UK based bank and All UK cards have this capability.

How did you make this happen?

Meanwhile I may just try AMEX Plat though I am not too hopeful because AMEX's own 3-D Secure is AMEX Safekey which is not specifically shown on TK's site, however TK does show 3-D Secure symbol on the payment screen.

US is NOT available with AMEX Safekey according to AMEX Global website. The whole Europe and Asia are on the program - when US card issuers would wake up?

Citi does not participate either. CapOne MC does according to Mastercard Secure site, but our MCs were converted by them to the Quick Silver Visa. And apparently it does not participate Verified by Visa!

I bought tickets from TK's Site in Denmark last July for a trip CPH-IST-SFO that is coming up this May. Used Amex Plat and had no issues or delays.

Thank you for the info!

I talked to Barclays security dept again 2 hours ago and got a lady manager who happened to have the ability to "activate" the mastercard securecode. She told me to wait an hour or so before trying again but she said the code was activated (?)

Did not try to mess around the Mastercard Securecode site again but went directly to retrieve held reservation at TK site, made a payment with the A+ card - it had a pop up window but did not require me to do anything, then a second pop up window which was completely DARK, I fully expected a failure -
BUT it went thru!

Saw this information on the top of the page
Credit Card: ************xxxx Authorisation Code: xxxxxx

The total amount has been charged to the indicated credit card during the payment. Your ticket has been issued as an electronic ticket. You will not receive a paper ticket.
.................................................. .................................................. ..............
Email confirmation took a few minutes to arrive and the attached zip files DO NOT contain e-tickets but the Rules of the tickets!

However I was able to retrieve the reservation on TK site, and then the details show the e-ticket number next to each passenger, and I was able to print a PDF file of each ticket. Whew!

Tickets also show up on Saudia site with coupon status - Open to Use. I am so thankful that Saudia site is using IATA data base for Manage My Booking so one can verify any e-ticket from any airline on its site. A Godsend.

Still have another ticket to purchase, now knowing AMEX Plat also works this is much appreciated info.

Barclay's US is NOT a UK based bank, they're a Delaware bank that's part of a large international group. But don't think anyone in the UK makes decisions, they don't.

I know. What I am saying is, the Barclays in Delaware is part of the Barclays group that is a UK-based financial institution.

http://www.barclays.com/about-barcla...the-world.html

Just like HSBC, it is basically all over the world, far more international presence than ANY of the US banks as the Americans tend to only know about.

With the root of Barclays, you would think they know better than a purely US-based bank like Chase or BofA to understand the importance of 3-D Secure, not to mention one of the selling points of the A+ card is the convenience it provides for International travels.

To wrap up, and for future reference and facilitate search results:

In case anyone needs to get the Mastercard Securecode "activated", this is the number to call 1-800-216-7248. This number directly sends you to the Barclays US cards Security Dept which opens till 11:59pm Mon to Sat but manager on duty time is much shorter obviously.
I was given the Mastercard support number 1-800-307-7309 in case there was another failure but thankfully I did not need it.

I just want to chime in with some recent experience trying to use MC SecureCode with my Arrival Plus card.

Last night I was trying to make a booking on BA.com, which states that it uses MC SecureCode / Verified by Visa. After hitting "submit" on the payment page, I was taken to a processing/loading page, which would load for a few seconds and then give me an undescriptive message saying the transaction has failed, that no money had been taken out of my account, and that I have the option to go back and try another card.

After a few attempts at this, I reasoned that the processing page is trying to load MC SecureCode, which I had never set up before, so I went to SecureCode website to try to register. I got the same identify verification failures that other people here reported, and was told my card has been "locked".

I called Barclays twice, and got very nice but unknowledgeable (not their fault) CSRs. At one point I had to explain to them what SecureCode is, and another time I was put on hold for 10 minutes, during which the agent seemingly googled a description of SecureCode and read it out to me... Now the part that I am p*ssed off about is this -- both times I ended up being transfered to the security department, who grilled me on a series of identity verification questions, only to put me on hold and HANG UP on me. After being hung up on by Barclays twice, I gave up and made the payment with a Citi VISA instead...

I was lucky to get reps at the security dept actually knew what that was about, except the first rep said the managers who could activate secure code were all gone so he could not help. The second rep on the next day turned out to be someone had the ability and she activated the code - I had her waiting on the phone while i completed the purchase. I NEVER know what my code is, but TK site went thru the mysterious process with 3 pop up windows - first with Turkish words, followed by a completely dark screen, followed by a blank screen with a few words in Turkish and then gave me the successful purchase screen with the last 4 digits of the card, authorization number and the reservation which now has e-ticket next to each passenger.
Until then I let the Barclays rep go.

I did another purchase 2 days ago and it worked as described with success. I dont intend to register on Mastercard site for fear that it would mess things up now the card has "active securecode" though I have not the slightest clue it is.

AMEX Plat card works on 3-D secure per someone on the TK forum fwiw.

Glad Citi Visa work for you.

Chase told me my cards are automatically enrolled in Verified by Visa now and I just need to use last 4 SSN to finish the verification process at purchase. I have not tried it yet. This is different from my experience in April last year when I had to call Chase security which in turn patched me to Visa liaison which reps told me it was granted access one transaction at a time!