An odd thing happened to me today. Actually, an odd thing happened yesterday, but it's having the same odd thing happen today that really makes it odd. With me so far?

Yesterday, while I was shopping at Amazon, Amazon told me that my American Express card had expired. While it is set for a May expiration, it's several years in the future. I didn't think too much of it, because when I re-entered the same information, Amazon accepted it.

Today, I got the same thing with the same card on iTunes!

Online stores don't do a whole lot with your credit cards. For the most part, they just make a call out to a credit card processor. Small stores have to go through a second-tier CCVS system that charges a few pennies per transaction. Large ones---and do they get larger than Amazon?---generally connect directly to a payment processor. The payment processor may charge a fraction of a cent per transaction, but they definitely make it up in volume.

(There are other business factors, too, like the committed transaction volume, response time SLAs, and the like.)

Asynchronously, the payment processor collects from the issuing bank. It's the issuing bank that actually bills you, and sets your interest rate and payment terms.

Whereas VISA and MasterCard work with thousands of issuers, American Express doesn't. When you get an AmEx card, they are the issuing bank as well as the payment processor.

Which makes it highly suspect that the same card gave me the same error through two different sites. It makes me think that American Express has introduced a bug in their validation system, causing spurious declines for expiration. 

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