“State of Palestine, Occupied” Works for Debit Cards in Israel

J.P. Morgan Chase allows debit-card travelers to select “State of Palestine, Occupied” as their destination to enable their cards to continue to work without a glitch overseas, but does not allow the same for Israel, the Jerusalem Post reports.

A banker said his attempt to select Israel on the Morgan Chase system prompted a message saying that this was impossible due to Israel’s “high risk” status. But “State of Palestine, Occupied,” was listed a valid option.

A customers’ forum noted a year ago that “Chase has an ongoing policy of telling customers that they can’t guarantee usage in Israel. They are the only bank I know of that does this.”

Trish Wexler, chief communications officer for J.P. Morgan Chase, told the Jerusalem Post that the company’s data-driven algorithms had detected heightened fraud in Israel. The bank therefore disabled the travel alert for Israel because accepting the option makes the company less likely to decline transactions done in Israel which might otherwise be flagged for fraud.

{Matzav.com Israel}