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Comment by Waterluvian | Hacker News Reader

As a Canadian I was lost and confused when visiting the States (in the before time) and a gas pump asked for my zip code. So I put in the one and only zip code I know. I bet you can guess.

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Glad you could come visit from Beverly Hills ;)

EDIT: actually, depending on your age and what you watched on TV, maybe you were visiting from Boston?

I used to use that one too, but you're supposed to put the 3 numerical digits of your postal code followed by 00. (I have no idea how you're supposed to know that though.)

Really? Or does that just work because it's numbers? I can't imagine how that's useful because without the letters the same 12300 could be in Vancouver or Montreal couldn't it?

I don't know much about credit card validation, but I have the impression that the zipcode is just one more correlation that tells them you're more likely to be the real owner of the card.

If the 3 numbers I type match the 3 digits of the owner's postal code, it's probably a reasonable signal that I'm the owner (even without the letters).

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I was inputting for ages.

Did it work?

It probably did. I was in the us this summer and was similarly confused that the pump wanted a us zip code for a foreign card. I input the zip for the address i was staying at and it worked...

Huh. I'd always assumed the zip code was validated against the card's billing address but maybe it's actually for some kind of market research. I'll have to try myself.

Following up: I tried a valid but incorrect zip code recently and the transaction was declined. Presumably this is because there is a valid one associated with my account?

Yeah. Random numbers wouldn’t but it did. I assumed it had to be a valid zip code.

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