Halifax Bans ‘WoW’

21 Apr 2008 at 18:36:35 by Paul Younger

Halifax bank has blocked payments to ‘World of Warcraft’, blaming it on the constant use of stolen credit cards to pay for the game’s subscriptions.

The issue became apparent when a Halifax customer complained to the bank when he was unable to pay for his ‘WoW’ account using his card. The bank apologised for the inconvenience and told him its fraud analysts have “made the decision to decline all Blizzard transactions due to the high volume of fraud and a high incidence of compromised details.”

In a statement to The Register, Halifax said, “We have seen a significant number of fraudulent transactions through Blizzard’s gaming sites. We have, therefore blocked the majority of Visa/Mastercard transactions we receive from there in order to combat this. We do not believe the fraud is anything to do with Blizzard themselves, their sites or the integrity of their billing systems, rather it is site users utilising stolen credit card details to pay for subscriptions.

“If a customer does want to subscribe to a game site operated by Blizzard, using a Halifax or Bank of Scotland credit card, we can arrange for the payments to be processed for them if they contact us.”

This could be the answer to any ‘WoW’ addicts trying to kick the habit. We have so far been unable to get comments from Blizzard or Halifax.

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