sabbasolo

I have been unable to get any non-Indian credit cards to process through the GoFirst website. It says declined, or sometimes pending and then declined.

So I booked through Travelocity - but now I needed to change the booking so I called them (got through easily), but I still can't pay the change fees or anything.

1) Will they cancel my changed booking if I wait to pay at the airport (like my agent said they will)?
2) Any workaround for payment for foreigners?

thanks

PiperAtGatesofDawn

Which country are you booking from? What types of credit cards do you have? For the US Amex generally works better (with AI at least).

sabbasolo

These are USA credit cards (although I tried an Australian one too). GoFirst only takes Mastercard and Visa, they don't ask for an address, only a phone number, and so I suspect they aren't set up for overseas cc payments. I tried with a VPN to India and to USA.

Keyser

This is unfortunately a well known problem with online merchants in India & the only fix is using an Amex (if that particular merchant accepts Amex).

The Reserve Bank of India recently put in some additional guidelines for online payments that require a secondary verification method such as receiving a one time password from the bank on your phone. Most, if not all, US & overseas cards don't have this type of setup so the merchant ends up declining the payment.

PiperAtGatesofDawn

VPNs won't solve your problem. See if your bank offers 2FA. Sometimes it can be enabled through your mobile banking app.

SeeBuyFly

I have essentially the same problem, unable to book on AI's web site. AI has "web special" fares that are not always available on other sites such as Orbitz.

(a) Does any AmEx card work reliably? Does it have a 2FA option? I don't want to get a card and find out it is useless. I tried to make a dummy booking and found that airindia.in does not take AmEx, so forget that.
(b) Is the 2FA thing hypothetical or is there actual experience with US cards? I know 2FA is required in India, but if I manage to find an US CC that requires 2FA, is it known to work for online purchases in India, i.e. US-card 2FA is recognized in India as the equivalent of Indian OTP-based 2FA?
(c) Does "Verified by Visa" "Visa Secure" work as 2FA---any actual experience? Are there any specific US cards known to work for online India purchases?

(Note: I know many cards worked as of a few months ago, but do they work in spring 2022?)

Many thanks!

PiperAtGatesofDawn

AI does accept Amex even if it doesn't display the Amex logo. Start typing a few numbers of your Amex and you'll see it's recognized.

By online do you mean online shopping or airlines? Amazon for instance will let you purchase things fairly easily. The airlines were hit by a massive fraud several several years ago with people using stolen credit cards. So they went to the other extreme and demand that people start carrying photocopies of the credit card the booking was made in and other such nonsense.

Not sure if Visa Secure or 3DS is 2FA. But it's more a merchant side thing rather than a customer or card issuer thing.

SeeBuyFly

No, amazon.in doesn't take any of my credit cards as of the last ~6 months. And my card issuers cannot fix it, they say "We aren't the ones doing it" i.e. it is not a potential-fraud thing.

So it is possible that your experience of using AmEx on airindia.in is also a few months old and therefore out of date.

In person use of US credit cards still works in India, although not everywhere (some merchants say their systems cannot accept US cards).

PiperAtGatesofDawn

Screenshot for AI from just now below. Also just re-added my US CC to my Amazon India account just now. It got added fine. But I didn't actually buy something so it might trip up then I don't know.

SeeBuyFly

Yes but does the payment go through? With Visa and MC, which is all I have, the payment does not go through any more, either on airindia.in or amazon.in.

PiperAtGatesofDawn

Amex US will go through for AI. US MC & Visa fail on AI.

Haven't tried my US Visa with Amazon India.

SeeBuyFly

Ok, thanks! I will look into getting AmEx.

SeeBuyFly

I did get an AmEx, but today my Visa worked again, both on airindia.in and amazon.in. This may not last though, who knows.

PiperAtGatesofDawn

Which bank? Do you have 2FA on it?

SeeBuyFly

Fidelity Investments (Elan), and no they do not have 2FA. But the amazon.in payment process involved a third party payu.in which sent me a code by SMS to the US cell phone listed in my CC account. The second amazon.in purchase went through without this. Air India went through with no 2FA even the first time.
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