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Comment by FractalParadigm | Hacker News Reader

> It's amazingly rare to find gas stations that don't require prepay these days...

Interestingly here in Canada I have the opposite experience; it seems like only stations in high-crime and super high-volume locations require it. There's ~10-12 stations I frequent and only one requires pre-payment, and even then only between 11p-5a.

Another thing that got me the first time I visited the US, what's the deal with pumps requiring a ZIP code? I know the "trick for Canadians" (the three digits of your postal code followed by 00, i.e. A1B 2C3 becomes a "valid zip code" of 12300) but it seems like a pointless extra step and a potential privacy issue.

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The zip code is needed for credit card validation. Stolen credit cards are often used to pump as much gas as possible before the cardholder notices, which could then be resold or used by the criminals.

Requiring the zip code is just a barrier to that

What's the fail-condition for non-US cards? Do they accept any Zip code you enter, reject everything, or expect you to enter something like the postal code digits plus zeroes?

The card issuer ultimately decides and I suspect it varies. These things can be pretty annoying internationally though, I've had the opposite problem that Canadian gas pumps won't take my US credit card and I have to pay inside - I think because for whatever reason Canadian credit card terminals want a signature slip every time I use my card, which based on cashier confusion I take it is unusual for Canadian issuers. Mexican credit card terminals don't do this, so there's something more inconsistent than just international transactions, I assume it's an irritating interaction of the network trying to line up the schemes in the various countries.

Amusingly debit cards tend to be less of a pain this way since the North American countries are mostly on the same interbank network and the rules have changed less over time.

I wondered about that the last time I drove to Canada (about ten years ago), and I just kind of held my breath and the gas pumps all worked.

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