Having a business debit card in Romania VISA or Mastercard compatible is not easy: Romanian banks are really worse. So far, I had problems with 3 banks and I am looking for the next one.
1) First bank was ok, the card was working perfectly anytime I needed. Problem is that once, when I went to bank to get the monthly extract (btw: don’t even hope to get extract via email or snail mail), I got it via … a friend from some other company that got my extract when he got his extract … like a bonus. so, the extract is provided in an envelope that usually bank has to send it to you via snail mail, but in Romania you have to go the bank to get it. So there, when he got his extract, somehow, he got mine also. I never got the mistery behind this event, weather my friend got the extract because he asked for it (yes you can simply ask for it, no need to show any ID or other paper) or because he got mine instead of his.
I went to the bank directory and told her about this and wanted to find out how this could happen. Well, it’s a human mistake, probably the envelopes got stuck together … So much for bank secrecy, a competitor company got my card extract and found out how much I pay for webdomains, where I buy them, where I buy hosting, how much I pay for Adwords, what books I purchased lately from Amazon, etc. This is Romania ….
2) The second adventure is even worse. If in case #1 the card worked ok, in case #2 the card also worked, only that … it was not a business card it was an individual card. So they got me a card that was for personal use, not for business use. The weird thing is that when I noticed that company name was not printed on the card, they told me: well, it’s ok, only your name should be printed. After a about year, when I had to discover that the card I thought it was a business card, was in fact an individual card, they asked me: “why are you complaining, did you not notice only your name was printed on the card, not the company card?” Well, of course I noticed … The other strange fact is that at this particular bank, you can not have a VISA compatible card usable for internet, unless you have other card in local currency that this card must be “linked”. An, in order to use the “virtual – Internet only” card you have to change money from the other one, so this link is clearly a must have. And I had a “must have” link between an individual card and a company card which was probably impossible unless somebody really pushed the YES button on the “are you sure you want to do this stupid mistake” windows pop-up button. In the end I gave up this bank (the same as in the previous post) and moved to bank #3
3) Bank #3 was supposed to be a cool bank: I checked their website, their services, their prices, I had an individual account with them and everything was nice, so I decided to open a company account also. Everything was ok until I started using the card for Internet payments. First month was ok, then … “credit card not approved”. I started getting this message everywhere I was trying to use the card. I called their support and they clarified me: “well, we have a new security measure in place that is banning transactions to websites that are not sending the 3 number security code. I was amazed they had idea about the 3 security code, usually card support are dumb people trying to use a computer. I asked them: “How is it possible that I tried 5 websites, all of them being major websites, using 3 security number check and non of them worked? Not even Google worked!” “Well, these are the measures we are taking for security reasons”
Now I am searching for an other bank.