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Comment by gpvos | Hacker News Reader

Sometimes when a credit card payment is handled by Paypal they ask for my first name. I enter my initials, since that's what actually on my credit card and is what I always use when making payments with it, but they don't accept it. Maybe somehow they know my actual first name, but I'm not going to give it to them so I then abort the payment.

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Indeed, if you use privacy.com to get a temporary credit card (this is for totally legit purposes, folks!), you can use any name and address on the form you enter it in. Only the credit card #, expiration date, and security code are verified.

> I enter my initials, since that's what actually on my credit card and is what I always use when making payments with it, but they don't accept it

They (or probably just the form) don't like dots and/or too few characters in the field.

As sibling says you can actually enter anything you want in the "CARDHOLDER NAME" field 99% of times. For years I type "$BANK NAME" or "$BANKNAME CARD" (note the space) there and I never been denied.

Interesting. I have tried all combinations with and without spaces or dots, but I don't think I ever considered entering something not truthful, even though I have done that in other online forms thousands of times (one favourite is entering the street address of the organization I'm interacting with instead of my own when ordering non-physical goods; and fake birth dates of course). There's something about payments that apparently I consider more "holy" than other things.

Back in the day you could [sometimes] see FIRSTNAME L. in the sales receipt, but that was when the magstripe was the only option. Apparently it was a form of anti-fraud measure back in 20th century so someone could see what is printed on the card and what is written in the receipt (aaaaand what?).

With the move to teh chip cards and later to PayPass (which doesn't even transmit your card number in any meaningful way) rendered inclusion of anything viable there meaningless.

> There's something about payments that apparently I consider more "holy" than other things.

WEll there is always some idiot what would make it hard for everyone else. Like web designers who do ahve a very... interesting understanding of the outside world (people with Verylonglastnames-SometimesDoubledUp? living on Cultist Monks Revolution of May 1111 year Street? Don't kid me, they don't exist!). Or admins who made you think twice to enter bullshit in the form because the scary red letters says you would need a national ID to receive the package (and names there and in the receipt should be the same!) only for the courier just give the package and be on his merry way not even bothering to check anything (and sometimes forgetting to take money for the package paid in cash, lol).

For now I only know where you need to give your real (ie printed on the card, not your real one, lolagain) name is when the card data is processed manually. The only country where I know it still exists is US of A, last year friend of mine needed to fill out a PDF form (thankfully electronic without the need to print and send it physically!) to pay for Untappd Business.

I learned recently that a common option for address verification is to concatenate all the numbers and compare that, disregarding all the words.

"Please fill out the STATE" is the bane for anyone who orders from the States, along with ZIP codes. Thankfully 90210 works most of the time.

And the UK's belief an entire street address always fits into a single short line is a bane for many foreigners. Every country seems to think they're the norm.

In many cases, you can enter any name. Have fun.

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