Reminds me a bit of using a Canadian credit card in the US and occasionally being prompted to enter your zip code. Canadian postal codes are an alternating sequence of six letters and numbers (A1A 1A1). Turns out that in most cases, you can enter just the digits from your postal code in order then right pad with zeros. Perhaps not on MetroCard machines though!
I was just in SF (also from Canada), and I couldn't use their metro's Clipper card app to reload the card, because it assumed my card had a US billing address. (Not just a 5-digit zip-code box, but also a "state" selector with only options of US states, and no "country" selector.)
Weird that they even bothered to list the app for download in the Canadian app-store.
I remember back about a decade ago I went to Vancouver BC on the company's dime. Turns out the corporate card was set to "PIN priority" or whatever so you could not use it as a chip and signature card in Canada. Unfortunately US Bank sent my PIN to me at home the day I left for the trip. The metro had caught on fire the day before so I didn't actually have to deal with paying for transit.
Anyways, with the Clipper card if you're going to use the app just add it to your phone's wallet and use your phone to tap the card readers. Alternatively you should still be able to top your card up at any place that sells Clipper cards – but that may take a day or two to update. As annoying as that is, both BART and Muni made paying for a subway ride with cash as excruciating as possible. You were boned if you wanted to pay with a $20 bill. Or if you wanted to use a credit card to pay for a BART ticket at the some of the ticket machines at some of the poorer stations.
Reach out to Streetsblog or SFist if you want to bubble up the complaint.
It’s documented at some gas stations near the border, also common on some forums. If padding with 00 doesn’t work, try 01, 02, etc. If filling in an online order form, it’s best to write in as much of your real address as possible, but zip code validation often means the city and state has to match the fake zip code. (This can have sales tax implications.) To avoid this, you can sometimes add US addresses to your credit cards as an alternate address, though I pretty much never do this.
Unlike some Visa cards, MasterCard is apparently a global network with very little difference crossing borders. So this trick works outside the US too. Generally the address is checked by humans at some step, and an address “close enough” (at least the street address and name needs to match), then the transaction is often allowed through. If it doesn’t go through, tell your credit card company you often make purchases online from country X and your card will usually be flagged to allow it in future.
Same thing here, was told this by my bank when issued a US funds card.
A hint ; the padding doesn't have to be zeros (for my bank, when it approves during checks). So for example if you are doing 12300, this may not be a valid zip code.
In my case, my 12300 wasn't valid. I clued into this, because the code worked in most places where it should, but not a few others. I then looked up some codes, and realised that 12300 wasn't a real zip code.
So I Googled, and tried 123xx, where xx matches a real, valid zip code.
This gets by some checks, which table-lookup against valid zip codes, before sending a request to validate the zip remotely.
Even better, I then found an address for a condemned building on that same zip code. When required, I used that address as the 'bill to' address, and even that works sometimes. Very helpful when snowbirding, and spending 4+ months in the US.
