Who performs the blocking on a Visa card?
It is the people who you bought the ticket from. Blocking is frequently done by hotels, gas stations, or rental car companies. Also, for anything where the credit card might be used to cover any damages or charges you might incur later as part of the transaction. In essence, they are reserving part of your credit limit, ostensibly to cover charges they reasonably expect you might incur. For example, when you start pumping gas using a credit card they may block out $100 to make sure you don't pump a full tank and your credit card is declined because you ran over your limit at $3.  In general, the blocks clear fairly quickly after you settle up with the company on your final bill. You can also ask the company to clear the block, but I don't think they are required to by law in any specific time period. It may be up to their (and your) agreement with the credit card company. Normally it isn't an issue and you don't even notice this going on behind the scenes, but if you keep your credit card near its limit, or use a debit card it can lead to nasty surprises (e.g. they can make you overdraw your account). One more reason not to use debit cards. More information is available here on the Federal Trade Commission's website. The request to block the money is made by the Party who sells the product. Based on this request the Bank blocks the funds. Subsequently the Party who sold the product makes a charge against this block. Just to give an easy example; So in the online train booking there are multiple messages sent between the Bank and SNCF. Something has gone wrong. It looks like the message from Bank sending back the Block reference number to SNCF has not reached. So as per Bank there is a Block and as per SNCF there is no block. Keep chasing SNCF to issue a letter so that you can send it to the Bank and get the Block removed. Typically the Blocks by the Bank are for a period of 30 days and if there is no charge against that block it automatically gets reversed. "There are, in fact, two balances kept for your account by most banks that have to comply with common convenience banking laws.  The first is your actual balance; it is simply the sum total of all deposits and withdrawals that have cleared the account; that is, both your bank and the bank from which the deposit came or to which the payment will go have exchanged necessary proof of authorization from the payor, and have confirmed with each other that the money has actually been debited from the account of the payor, transferred between the banks and credited to the account of the payee.  The second balance is the ""available balance"". This is the actual balance, plus any amount that the bank is ""floating"" you while a deposit clears, minus any amount that the bank has received notice of that you may have just authorized, but for which either full proof of authorization or the definite amount (or both) have not been confirmed. This is what's happening here. Your bank received notice that you intended to pay the train company $X. They put an ""authorization hold"" on that $X, deducting it from your available balance but not your actual balance. The bank then, for whatever reason, declined to process the actual transaction (insufficient funds, suspicion of theft/fraud), but kept the hold in place in case the transaction was re-attempted. Holds for debit purchases usually expire between 1 and 5 days after being placed if the hold is not subsequently ""settled"" by the merchant providing definite proof of amount and authorization before that time. The expiration time mainly depends on the policy of the bank holding your account. Holds can remain in place as long as thirty days for certain accounts or types of payment, again depending on bank policy. In certain circumstances, the bank can remove a hold on request. But it is the bank, and not the merchant, that you must contact to remove a hold or even inquire about one."
You can split payments, and nobody judges you because most prepaid cards are actually gift cards.  They just think you have generous friends.   When you use Visa/MC at a vendor, they get dinged around 2-3% plus 35 cents flat-rate.  So when you ask them to charge 77 cents to the card, you're essentially asking they give half of it to Visa/MC.  Which is unfair.  A charity won't turn it down, but it's wasted.  So how do you solve this problem?  If you see a small merchant using Square or PayPal Here, their merchant agreements charge a flat rate (2.75% and 2.70% respectively) with no flat rate per transaction.  If you see they are on PayPal/Square, go for it.   Obviously PayPal itself doesn't have that problem, because they have a really, really good deal with Visa and Mastercard.  So feel free to buy yourself credit on your PayPal account with these residual values.   Amazon probably has a similar deal.   You are getting these small amounts because you aim to pay a $22.69 bill with a card that has $25 on it.  Reasonable, but it causes this.   Flip it around: pay a $22.69 bill with a card that has $20 on it, consume the $20 value, and pay the $2.69 in cash.  You may need to tell the cashier exactly the amount to charge (e.g. $20.00) especially if it is a Visa/MC card.  It will certainly go faster if you do.  The cashier may be able to pull up the balance, but it's an extra procedure, and an inexperienced cashier may struggle with it / have to call the manager etc. - not worth it in my book. There are 2 parties when we say credit card companies: The bank that gives you a card & VISA/Mastercard For a Bank the revenues generally come from: For VISA/Mastercard the revenue is from: P.S. Have not covered American express here but in short it is a combination of the above 2 models The problem is that both the H1b and L1 visas have problems and are gamed and this is what is probably causing resentment.  H1b visas have quotas that run out in one day a year, it means for a company to employ someone with skills they need to throw a bunch of them at this yearly crap shoot and hope they manage to win a visa for one of them.  The rest will have to wait another year to try again.  This is not how businesses employ, if they find a highly skilled foreign worker with skills they can't find in the US and are even willing to pay him more than anyone in the US, they can't unless they want to play that yearly gamble.  A highly skilled employee also don't want to sit around waiting for it, so they'll work for someone else.  The L1 visa at least allows large multi national companies to first employ people at one of their foreign offices for a year before carting them over to the US.  It's also good in a way to be able to figure out if the employee is as good as he seems on paper and in interviews, even before he gets to the USA.  This means most of the better skills probably enter the USA this way, which leaves the H1b visas to consultancies who systematically game the system.  They find a lot of young graduate applicants who are willing to wait for the yearly crapshoot and then take all those who win a visa and then employ them and contract them out 'competitively'.  The L1 visa can also be systematically gamed, those who don't win an H1b visa could be working for a foreign office of this consultancy in the meantime and then get a transfer to the USA on an L1 visa.  I think what needs to happen is that the H1b visa bar should be raised, e.g. a minimum salary, and then the quotas should be spread over a year like they do in the UK.  That means companies have more certainty that they can actually bring a skilled worker in, and it would make sure it's a skilled worker and not someone who is just a cheaper worker.  Then that would ideally shift the route for most skilled workers to H1b instead of L1 visas, which means L1 visas can be tightened to make sure they are used appropriately too, for example having to have worked for the company for 2 years instead of one and also a minimum salary. Recently, over 11 lakh PAN cards has been deactivated by the Income Tax Department to fetch out fake and duplicate PANs. The main targets are the individuals who are having multiple PAN cards and those with PAN cards issued under fake documents. Blocking fake PAN cards can help the government restrain identity theft and purchase of benami properties. There are three parties involved here: there's the store that issued you the card, then they have some bank that's actually handling the account, and there is some network (VISA, MasterCard, etc.) that the transactions go through. So one avenue to consider is seeing whether all three are aware of you canceling the card. I did just what you suggest. The card company honored the charge, they told me the temporary number was solely for the purpose of assigning a number to one vendor/business. So even though I set a low limit, the number was still active and the card company paid the request. Small price to pay, but it didn't go as I wished.    For this purpose, I've used Visa/Mastercard gift cards. They are often on sale for face value and no additional fees. There are 2 parties when we say credit card companies: The bank that gives you a card & VISA/Mastercard For a Bank the revenues generally come from: For VISA/Mastercard the revenue is from: P.S. Have not covered American express here but in short it is a combination of the above 2 models An advantage of using a major credit card is that they act as a buffer and source of recourse between you and the merchant. Cheated and the store won’t answer you letters? Call Visa (or more accuratly, call the number on the back of the card). (That is, #2 on this answer, which you can also reference for a whole list of benefits.)