Maestro are going the way of American Express, making it an [censored] to support as a company and so people drop them instead. New Maestro policies are:
* Online transactions must use 3DSecure, i.e. requires user interaction to authorise ANY online payment. (If PlayNC are using the store card details system this scuppers them)
* Continuous Authority must be provided with an expiry date, only card provider to insist so is not supported by some payment providers.
Providing a subscription service that works with Maestro AND everyone else suddenly becomes very difficult and you can only support what you payment provider supports. I suspect this caught a few people by surprise as Maestro have historically been poor to notify people of their policies, I still remember having to hastily integrate 3DSecure into our payment systems because their policy wasn't clear last August.
As such, if you have Maestro then time cards are the only real way atm, it's just a shame you can't just make one off payments on the PlayNC site rather than time cards however.
Finally, all these changes by the banks, badged as improved security, what a crock. All they do is shift liability from them and the banks to you, their customers. If a fraudulent transaction occurs that has been 3DSecure authorised wave goodbye to ever seeing that money again. Considering all you need is card number, expiry and date of birth to change the 3DSecure e-mail and password it's a real fake layer of security!
