The Bhutanese Leading the way.
You have shopped a few things for the family at Uniqlo, and there is a long line behind you. You wonder if it is wise to use your credit card or international debit card from Bhutan, but you are not carrying much cash and so decide to use a card.
The cashier swipes your bill and after an agonizing long wait, she announces your card is ‘rejected.’ There are curious stares from behind and you quickly handover another card and the same reply comes. With your public embarrassment complete you now dig into your purse for any possible cash.
The above scene will be familiar for many Bhutanese using Bhutanese credit and debit cards either in the region or abroad.
Even if you have enough balance there is a high rejection and fail rate of these cards in other countries.
While this may save the country some foreign exchange in the short run, in the long run it is not good for the country’s image or financial reputation and is bad for business.
We need to look at the causes of the issues and it is time that financial institutions in Bhutan take concrete measures to fix this international embarrassment for Bhutanese going out and trying to use our local cards.
Our banks have fewer partnerships with global payment networks and foreign banks, which can cause issues with transaction approvals when traveling.
Bhutan’s banking system faces disruptions due to connectivity issues, affecting real-time transaction processing abroad.
Transactions from unusual locations can trigger security alerts. Bhutanese banks may block transactions if they suspect fraud, especially if prior travel notifications aren’t provided. This needs to be filtered.
The debit and credit cards may have a certain amount on it but then the bank places daily limit transactions for security reasons where the full amount or close to it on a card cannot be used.
Some Bhutanese cards might not support advanced security features like EMV chip or 3D Secure, causing declines at terminals requiring these technologies.
There may be technical and systemic issues but the main issue is that there is no lesson learnt from past experiences of clients and FIs keep repeating the same mistakes. There seems to be little effort or regard to ensuring such things don’t happen again.
Sometimes the experience can be very harrowing for Bhutanese who have decided not to carry much cash and instead trust the cards.
“Reliability is the precondition for trust.”
– Wolfgang Schauble