AIB Transactonline to be discontinued

oneweb

My mum received a letter more than a month ago telling her that AIB will soon be discontinuing its transactonline service. She never uses it, but I'm a frequent user of transactonline. Needless to say I'm not happy that they're giving it up, and annoyed that they didn't even inform me, it's not even mentioned on the transactonline page - I had to call 24hour banking to have it confirmed. The girl on the phone said it would no longer be available from the end of July.

The blurb on the letter went along the lines of "New, improved security, etc" - the Verified by Visa program. This is only half of what transactonline was. The Verified program puts the onus on the retailer to register with Visa for the "added security". You need a password to shop in such online stores. But there's nothing forcing a retailer to continue as they are. I regularly use throw-away numbers where I want to be absolutely certain I'm only charged a certain amount, and only once. Verified does nothing to stop that.

It's such a pity because I never felt transactonline was advertised enough to get a decent user base, nor was it very well supported - the odd time there was an issue it could take up to 2 days to resolve.

I'm complaining to them, and would be grateful if anyone else who got the letter could PM me the name given on it as it was thrown out by mistake.


Contact details if anyone wants to register comments with AIB are...
AIB Group Headquarters
Bankcentre,
Ballsbridge,
Dublin 4, Ireland.
+353 (0) 1 6600311
or
24tecsup(AT)aib(DOT)ie

Bluetonic

Why are you so paranoid when using your card online?

Dave!

Damn, never heard about that before today, but it seems like a good idea..... Oh well

Sponge Bob

oneweb wrote:

The blurb on the letter went along the lines of "New, improved security, etc" - the Verified by Visa program. This is only half of what transactonline was. The Verified program puts the onus on the retailer to register with Visa for the "added security". You need a password to shop in such online stores. But there's nothing forcing a retailer to continue as they are. I regularly use throw-away numbers where I want to be absolutely certain I'm only charged a certain amount, and only once. Verified does nothing to stop that.

Its Nuala Jordan. and David Roberts is in charge (I think) of epayment systems and e-whatevers

nuala.jordan@aib.ie or nuala.jordan@aib.com jordann@eib.ie

I totally agree with you that Transactonline protects the AIB customer and the individual and the bank to some extent and Verified by Visa protects the likes of P0xmania who then don't ship and you can't charge back and you left with no goods .

Its a disgraceful situation and I will be asking that woman for written assurances as to what happens if I want to charge back if defrauded seeing as I protected myself and AIB both for years.

jester77

Not a fan of it at all!

Tried it a few times and nothing but trouble. I would purchase something with the throw away number and a day or 2 later I would get a call from the retailer asking me to send a photocopy of my passport and the front and back of the credit card. Of course this was impossible and when I tried to explain it to them they would have none of it. Couldn't change to my normal credit card as they thought it was a dodgy customer. Have been using the actual card ever since and in the 10 years that I have been using credit cards with numerous retailers from all over Europe, Asia and US I've never once encountered a problem.

hardCopy

I think the reason it wasn't advertised is because they stopped registering new users quite a while ago as they've been planning to discontinue the service for a good while

BuffyBot

It was never as widely used as AIB thought it would be really. Probably isn't worth the expense of supporting anymore.

Scruff

would the 3v cards not be an option to use instead?

aidan_walsh

BuffyBot wrote:

It was never as widely used as AIB thought it would be really. Probably isn't worth the expense of supporting anymore.

I never knew it existed, and I use their online banking most days of the week.

oneweb

Scruff wrote:

would the 3v cards not be an option to use instead?

At €5 a pop (which they fail to mention in the ads)? most definitely not

Stephen

Not to mention the low credit limit on 3V. And the lack of actual... credit.

ejmaztec

Great shame they pulled the plug on it. Orbiscom, the company behind the idea still list AIB as one of their clients!

http://www.orbiscom.com/

gizmo

Meh, using some common sense with your credit card will make sure you never get ripped off. I honestly don't see the massive fuss with the whole "OH NOES SOMEONE MIGHT STEAL MY CREDIT CARD NUMBER!!111". If you only deal with reputable sites then there won't be anything to worry about. For the occassional non-reputable purchases 3V should do you just fine.

BuffyBot

I never knew it existed, and I use their online banking most days of the week.

If you were using AIB's internet banking back in 2001/2002 though, it was plastered everywhere

jor el

Faceless Man wrote:

Meh, using some common sense with your credit card will make sure you never get ripped off. I honestly don't see the massive fuss with the whole "OH NOES SOMEONE MIGHT STEAL MY CREDIT CARD NUMBER!!111". If you only deal with reputable sites then there won't be anything to worry about. For the occassional non-reputable purchases 3V should do you just fine.

Plus most, if not all, credit card companies cover you for fraudulent use of your card. If a retailer issues a charge you didn't authorise, then it can be reversed. If someone steals your number and uses the card then you are covered by Visa or Mastercard.

In the hundreds of transactions I've made with my cards online I've never once had a problem. In fact, if someone does steal the number and start to use it, you'll most likely find out from the credit card company. Tesco rang me on Monday to query some transactions that they thought were suspicious. If I hadn't given the OK then they would have stopped the charges.

Scruff

oneweb wrote:

At €5 a pop (which they fail to mention in the ads)? most definitely not

didnt know that, seems rather excessive alright. will continue to steer clear seeing as i dont have any non-reputable purchases, as Faceless Man puts it, that i need to make.

i71jskz5xu42pb

oneweb wrote:

My mum received a letter more than a month ago telling her that AIB will soon be discontinuing its transactonline service.

Yeah BOI had the same thing (something called Boing - whoever came up with that name should be flogged). Not sure it was ever even launched never mind getting any traffic.

http://archives.tcm.ie/irishexaminer/2001/07/06/story7296.asp

jor el

Plus another €2.50 to redeem any unused credit when the voucher expires and a 1.75% commission on currencies outside the Eurozone. It's a good enough idea for people who can't get or don't want a credit card but the charges are a little high for what it is. When you consider the typical APR of about 15-20% on a credit card and the amount of people who don't clear their balance each month then it's maybe not that bad. The €350 limit on the voucher makes them pretty useless for buying anything large though, like computer or electronics gear.

MisterAnarchy

Transactonline is being switched off tonight.
Pity, it was a superb service.
I'll miss it alot.:(

Random

If they made it available for Mastercard aswell as Visa they'd have upped the following also.

What's the general email address for AIB Online Banking queries btw?

Mucco

As other have said, why not just use your credit card?

mik_da_man

MisterAnarchy wrote:

Transactonline is being switched off tonight.
Pity, it was a superb service.
I'll miss it alot.:(

Me too - it was a great little service

mik_da_man

Mucco wrote:

As other have said, why not just use your credit card?

Because it gave you a one use number and a € limit per transaction
Handy to know that your card would not be scammed

aphex™

mik_da_man wrote:

Because it gave you a one use number and a € limit per transaction
Handy to know that your card would not be scammed

If it is scammed the CC company pays for it, though. They take the money back from whoever used it.

MisterAnarchy

Its turned off now.
Congratulations AIB .
It seems AIB were too tight to continue to pay the licencing fees for the software.
It may have cut into their ginormous profits.
Verified by Visa is a rubbish replacement.

MisterAnarchy

aphex&#8482 wrote:

If it is scammed the CC company pays for it, though. They take the money back from whoever used it.

They dont take the money back,they compensate you.
You have to wait 60 days before you can make a claim ,you have to fill out loads of paperwork,hassle.
Transactonline prevented all that.
It stopped companies from billing you once a trial had lapsed,it stopped double charging,you couldnt be overcharged,your details were safe.
It is a great tool and had many uses.
Abbey Nationals spin off bank Cahoot use it in the UK but its called Webcard there.

BuffyBot

What's the general email address for AIB Online Banking queries btw?

I don't believe they have one.

blorg

Great pity they got rid of this, I used it frequently. It was particularly useful for avoiding automatic renewals etc. and much less hassle than having to go through a chargeback for disputed charges. Having said that, the only times I've been mischarged on a credit card have been pretty legitimate companies who presumably just made a slip up (Ryanair and Dublin Theatre Festival.) Got chargebacks done no problem in those cases.

vector

ciaranfo wrote:

What's the general email address for AIB Online Banking queries btw?

I emailed AIB ages ago asking if transactonline would soon be available for my AIB "Classic" MasterCard

credcard@aib.ie - they never replied
transactonline@aib.ie - they did reply after 3 weeks saying no

Colly

It must be cheaper for them to fund the criminals rather than fund secure software to sidestep the criminals. In other words pay out when there is a fraudulent transaction on your card, no need to support this where they would the software so they are putting the responsibility with the customers to be careful and faith, rather than a set license fee and support fees of a technology to stop the criminals.

Seems to go against what a banks are built are built around namely secure and all that and a bit of a cop out by them.

vector

I guess AIB discontinued transactonline because the renewal of the licence from the provider of the technology (ocard?) was going to cost too much, internally there was probably little objection as the service was not widely used (becase it was not promoted and was not available on mastercard, and for some silly reasons used an exe instead of a browser interface to a https generator)

AIB seem to think the replacement for transcatonline is "verified by visa", doubtless both increase a cardholders security, but to consider the latter to be a replacement is to fail to understand the nature of the former

parsi

Perhaps it's a case of Visa pushing Vefrified by Visa as their preferred method...