I am saying that merchants do not have the ability to verify card holder name.
Your transaction will process properly with Mickey mouse as first last.
Only amex verifies cardholder name.
EDIT: relevant stackexchange is here: https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/220724/i-can-pa...
Is giving a false name to the CC companies not illegal in some way? At the very least I'm certain it is a breach of contract.
I have the same, real-name relationship with my bank and card issuers that you or anyone else has.
Rando-web-merchant, on the other hand, never gets my real name.
"I don't know how true this is across all vendors."
Almost 100%.
There is a rarely used program called "verified by visa" that takes you through an additional verification step and encourages you to create some sort of account linked to your issuing bank (or something) but I have only run into that once in the years I have adopted this practice.
Merchants can request Address Verification (AVS) from the network, but the result is purely advisory: the merchant can ignore a mismatch if they choose. In my experience, most do ignore it.
This is also true of the CVV/CVV2/CSC/etc. Most web vendors require it, but it is not required to complete a transaction. Theoretically the provision of a correct CVV indicates that the consumer has the card in-hand. Chargeback appeals are somewhat more likely to succeed if the transaction included the CVV.