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Don't get me wrong, I want the merchant to get my money so that they can send me the Christmas gifts for my niece in time. Unfortunately, with my last payment I overdrew my account to which the Mastercard debit card is linked. The payment went through anyways, but now I am afraid that my bank could change their mind last minute.

I am totally fine with paying overdraft fees as long as the money arrives. Is the fact that my Mastercard was not declined enough the assume that the merchant will get the money? Can the bank still decide to cancel the transaction tomorrow (on Monday) when a real person looks at the transaction instead of a bot?

rkedge
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xabdax
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    Hang on, is it a credit card or a debit card? (You can have debit cards that use the Mastercard network, to be clear.) A credit card will have its own line of credit separate from your bank balance; a debit card will not. – ceejayoz Dec 15 '19 at 22:04
  • It's a debit card that uses the Mastercard network. – xabdax Dec 15 '19 at 22:05
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    In that case, you're probably looking at an overdraft fee. If your bank wanted to reject the payment, they'd have done it at the time the merchant processed it. – ceejayoz Dec 15 '19 at 22:05
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    Btw.: I don´t think any "real person" will have a look unless it was really really generous gift. This is such a standard case, the computers will have a rule for that! – Daniel Dec 16 '19 at 00:49

1 Answers1

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The answer to your general question "Are merchants guranteed a payment made with a Mastercard?" is "no". Merchants can lose the money through a chargeback.

However, in the particular case you describe, the merchant should get their money. From your description, it appears that the bank approved the transaction despite there being insufficient funds. Either this was an error on the bank's part (which would be rather bizarre, since NSF is one the easiest decline reasons to check), or they deliberately set up their system to allow NSF transactions, or a third remote possibility is that their system was down and someone else did Stand-in Processing for them.

In any of those cases, the bank is on the hook. They told the merchant the money was available, the merchant relied on that representation, and if it turns out that the money isn't available, that's between you and the bank (and in the case of STIP, whoever stood in for them). The merchant doesn't have any liability here.

Acccumulation
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