Credit Card - wrong card type entered

I booked a flight this morning on-line, using credit card.

The thing is, during entering my payment details I forgot to change the type of card from Visa to Mastercard. All the other info was correct.

I noticed this immediately and tried to stop the payment but I got an email confirmation about 1 minute later that the payment was successful and flight ref number etc.

I ended up phoning their helpline to explain. They said it had gone through and that they had a booking on their system and everything was fine and dont worry that I had selected Visa instead of Mastercard.

I am fairly worried that this is going to cause a problem - that I put Visa instead of Mastercard. Would the transaction not go to Visa (instead of Mastercard) ?

Surely the payment should have failed ?

As far as I recall the card type is encoded in the card number anyway and card processors probably check that rather than the manually selected card type (in which case it seems to be an extraneous item solicited by most forms). Check with your card provider to see if the transaction went through. You may need to give it a few days before it hits your account.

As far as I know Clubman is correct -The first 6 digits of your credit card number form the issuer identifier e.g.

Issuer Identifier Card Number Length
Diner's Club/Carte Blanche 300xxx-305xxx,36xxxx, 38xxxx 14
American Express 34xxxx, 37xxxx 15
VISA 4xxxxx 13, 16
MasterCard 51xxxx-55xxxx 16
Discover 6011xx 16

Howstuffworks has some info on this too. Anybody know why most payment forms request the card type when this information is already encoded in the number?

maybe to make sure you actually have the card

But if you have the number and look up the web then you know the card type - asking for it doesn't verify anything.

Thanks for replies. You learn something every day.

You would wonder why this peice of info is required if its not really used.

I will however be looking out for the transaction on my credit card statement (just to be sure!).

Ta.

depending on how old ur credit card account is it may be an actual mastercard account that u could get either a visa or mastercard card with. I know that I had a visa card for a long time and when the govt €40 came in I noted that the statements were referring to mastercard. I inquired and found out that even thought I had a visa card the account was actual a mastercard account and if I wanted I could have the mastercard as well (or instead). Think they date back to the time when not everywhere took both.

Tubbs said:

I will however be looking out for the transaction on my credit card statement (just to be sure!).

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Did you contact your credit card provider to check what the last transaction was rather than waiting for the bill to be issued?