Does the appearance of credit cards with expiration dates after 2000 mean the problem is fixed. That's what many folks who don't think this is a problem throw back at me.

Or, is this just the appearance of a fix which masks the deeper problem which will reassert it self later in 1999?

Help!

-- Dennis Fusaro (dennyva@aol.com), May 07, 1998

Answers

The credit card companies began working on this problem well in advance of most. Visa and MC are, for the most part, "fixed." That is with the exception of their terminals. They still must replace all the terminals - worldwide. They have replaced the preponderance of these, but they still experience many problems. AMEX, on the other hand, has yet to issue anything beyond a 99 expiration. They recently sent people out with test cards. They were all rejected. The bottom line is: there is no comparison between the CC companies and the rest of the financial markets. The CC companies were the first ones out of the gate, and the remainder of the financial sector are just now deciding if the gate is really open.

-- Glenn (bankboy@msn.com), May 07, 1998.

I have several credit cards with expiration dates of "00" and "01" and I have never experienced a problem using them. However, since I have encountered others who do claim to have experienced problems (I think the usual problem is that the merchant's authorization station refuses to approve the card).

My guess is that the organization which issued the card probably has a high degree of confidence that their software can deal with the Y2K problem. However, that is no guarantee that any third party equipment (i.e. the equipment used by any given bank or merchant) can also accept it. If this is true, I would interpret it to mean that the presence of "00" bank cards can be taken not as a "fix" of the Y2K problem but as an encouraging--though some may argue that it is slight--mitigation of it.

-- David Auslander (dauslander@usa.net), May 07, 1998.

Visa and Mastercard have fixed their systems. The remaining problems are retailers who have terminals (the things that they swipe your card through) that don't accept '00 cards. These retailers need to buy new terminals. In most cases that's no big deal -- in a few their card terminal is tied into a retail system with Y2K bugs, and those retailers have a much bigger problem.

I can't help thinking credit cards are a non-isssue. If there is trouble with banking systems on any significant scale, I doubt there will be many retailers willing to take plastic even if they are able to!

-- Nigel Arnot (nra@maxwell.ph.kcl.ac.uk), May 07, 1998.

I consider the problem a confirmation that there are deeper problems, and the credit card companies were lucky to have a long lead time in which only a few cards with 00 expiration dates were out for a while. My credit cards are generally issued to me for a three year period. This would indicate that in January 1997 the first cards were issued that had a 00 expiration date, and there would only be a small percent of them out the first month - less than 3%, if there is a steady flow each month of card replacements. Thus if the CC companies had problems, they were not catastrophic.

However, most of the rest of the systems will not get this much advance warning, if any. For many systems (particularly the embedded chip problems which seem to be out of sight), the first failure may also be the time of total failure for all uses of that particular chip or system - 1

-- Dan Hunt (dhunt@hostscorp.com), May 07, 1998.