5 Reasons Your Credit Card Gets Blocked

• Technical problems: This can be either from your bank's platform or that of the merchant you were transacting with. This could happen due to system upgrades or technical glitches. While these are only temporary and the card getting unblocked in a few minutes, your card could also remain blocked for longer unless you intimate your card-issuing bank about your card being blocked.
• Unusual Spending Patterns:  Banks sometimes block credit cards when the system picks up on unusual purchase patterns. While this is a feature designed for your protection, so as to prevent fraudulent use of the card, it can be an inconvenience as well when the transaction has been carried out by you.For example, if you usually use your card only for domestic purchases and suddenly use it on in an international location, your card could get blocked because the system thinks it's a fraudulent transaction. Another example is if your credit card transactions have not exceeded Rs.10,000 every month in the entire history of your credit card transactions, but suddenly you spend Rs.45,000 on it, the system could classify this as a fraudulent one. In such cases, it is important to call the bank's helpline number and request the card to be unblocked.
• Changes in Terms and Conditions:  Banks often change their terms and conditions which are intimated to customers by post or email or on the bank's official website. However, this is often missed by customers because they don't take the time to read the fine print or sometimes don't even open emails or mailers from the bank.
• Missed Payments: If you have not been paying your credit card bills on time or have skipped paying even the minimum amount due, then the bank may have already blocked the card and intimated this to you, which you have missed out on reading. This is when you would still use the card and find out it is blocked only then. The best way to avoid this is by making your credit card bill payments on time and making sure to read the emails or mailers from your credit card issuer.
• Incorrect data input: Your card could also get blocked if you have entered the wrong data multiple times. This would depend on the data requested by the merchant. It could be the CVV number, the date of expiry, or the PIN being entered wrong. To protect against fraudulent usage, banks usually block a card if the wrong data has been entered more than once. The way to prevent this from happening is to be careful when entering the data. Make sure to enter the numbers correctly and check before you enter it in the relevant fields. If you don't remember the numbers by-heart, it would be better to check the credit card physically and then enter the required data.

Now that you know the most common reasons why credit cards are blocked, you can take the necessary steps as outlined above to prevent this from happening.