http://www.techserver.com/noframes/story/0,2294,500151419-500185270-500772697-0,00.html

Glitch duplicates credit card charges daily

Copyright ) 2000 Nando Media Copyright ) 2000 Associated Press

From Time to Time: Nando's in-depth look at the 20th century

NEW YORK (January 7, 2000 3:00 p.m. EST http://www.nandotimes.com) - Buyers beware: Your credit card might get charged over and over again because some merchants failed to update their computer software for the year 2000.

Visa and Mastercard said Friday they have checks in place to catch duplicate charges, but they suggested that customers review their credit card statements anyhow. They added that the vast majority of transactions are going through without problems.

The culprit is IC Verify software from CyberCash, which makes electronic transaction processing software. About 100,000 merchants use the software. The company offered free fixes last year, but some merchants didn't get them.

As a result, merchants using the outdated software are charging customers over and over for the same purchase. For example, a customer's credit card gets charged $400 Monday for a new TV purchased that day. The card is again charged $400 on Tuesday, another $400 on Wednesday, and so on, until the software is fixed.

The Y2K bug usually stems from a programming practice of using only two digits to represent the year, so "00" might be misread as 1900. In this case, though, the problem occurs because of the way the software names its files.

The software keeps monthly records using the last digit of the year, "0," followed by the month, "01." However, "001" corresponds with another file that contains charges not yet posted. So when the software adds up payments at the end of each day, it wrongly interprets items in the monthly paid file as outstanding charges.

CyberCash spokeswoman Sydney Rubin said many merchants made the upgrades, but CyberCash received a flood of calls late this week from merchants who still need them.

The problem came to light late Wednesday when credit card processors began noticing unusual charges.

Smaller businesses were among the least prepared for Y2K. The National Federation of Independent Business had estimated that up to 1.5 million small employers did no Y2K preparation.

Linda Locke, a Mastercard spokeswoman, said banks usually catch the duplicated transactions and reverse them. Customers should contact the bank that issued the credit card for any problems, she said.

Visa spokeswoman Rosetta Jones said the number of duplicate charges were in the thousands, out of 100 million transactions each day.

-- Homer Beanfang (Bats@inbellfry.com), January 07, 2000

Answers

They added that the vast majority of transactions are going through without problems.

Visa spokeswoman Rosetta Jones said the number of duplicate charges were in the thousands, out of 100 million transactions each day.

Blob? Hardly an excuse for storing 2000 cans of tuna in my closet.

-- H.H. (dontscrewme_2000@yahoo.com), January 07, 2000.

Homer,

This very same thing occurred to a lady standing in front of me a Walmart the other day. Apparently she recieved credit but was then charged twice. The manager took her to the back room and I never saw her again.

-- y2k dave (xsdaa111@hotmail.com), January 07, 2000.

I heard Krepansky had something to do with this glitch.

Dork.

-- Gordon (g_gecko_69@hotmail.com), January 07, 2000.

Good post.

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), January 07, 2000.

SILICON INVESTOR - Friday, Jan 7, 2000 2:41 PM ET

From: Jay Lowe [VP R&D - Parallel Technologies & President, Quantum Software, Inc. - Redmond, WA]

Y2K, eh? ... When our accounting people started processing credit card orders via IC verify on Monday, all the card numbers came back invalid. Working through another channel, we've heard that a huge number of double and triple charges are occuring via IC verify and Cybercash.

It appears from the IC Verify website http://www.icverify.com that upgrades are required to both the client-side (PC or stand-alone box) and the institution-side payment processing engine. That's a lot of nodes available for screw-up ... in exactly the wrong hands.

Anybody know anything more about this?

Probably a good idea to scrutinize your credit card statements this month. ;-)

http://www.siliconinvestor.com/stocktalk/msgs.gsp?msgid=12493658

-- (Lurker@SiliconInvestor.com), January 07, 2000.

Yeah, Dave, just more proof that you should never jack with Walmart.

You wind up on their 'missing' board out by the coke machines 'last seen haggling over CC equipment'

LOLOLOL

-- lisa (lisa@work.now), January 07, 2000.