I recently tried to use my MBNA credit card to pay for a holiday accommodation booking on booking.com . It was refused several times so I called MBNA. When I eventually managed to speak to an agent they said that the payment had been refused because the site 'did not meet anti-fraud standards'. There was no indication in advance that this would be a problem, and the error message on booking.com did not indicate the nature of the problem.
As far as I am aware, booking.com is a large, well-established, online company? I've used it loads in the past with no issues. The MBNA agent said this was new legislation and wasn't able to offer any alternative means of paying for the accommodation. I was able to pay using savings but that wasn't the plan.
I'm worried now that I will try to use my credit card while on holiday to pay for food / activities / drinks etc and it will be refused - without warning. Is this normal? I'm going to contact MBNA to ask how credit card users are meant to deal with this but wondered if I'm missing something here? Anyone else had this issue?