[Jim_E]

I've had a word with my bank and I think I know what may be happening here.

When you sign up for a service like this the shop will usually try and authorise a small amount against your card to ensure it is valid for future transactions. Simply speaking there appear to be two steps to this in Sony's process - first it will validate that the formatting of the card is correct, and then it will go off and ask your bank if the card can accept a debit of a small amount.

I've just spoken to my bank and they have an authorisation for something like 'toys, hobbys, games' for 51 pence from the other day against my card, which at current exchange rate will more than likely be a $1 authorisation from the US PS3 store I signed in. Sony is happy at this point and of course doesn't take the money. And from the sounds of it they don't do further checking until you try and add a large value amount.

However, the bank have no failed authorisations from my attempts to sign into the HK store. I'm not familiar with the formatting of a HK card, or what exaclty is being validated against this, but the bank reckon that if they haven't declined an authorisation then it is likely that the format of the card is failing because it isn't recognised as a HK format. It could be anything from the amount of digits, to a different way of doing a security number or even the date I suppose.

I would guess that in the past this format check was not taking place, but at some point recently Sony have changed the system and now it is. My plan had been to ask the bank to authorise Sony Store HK on my credit card account if a request came in with slightly wrong address details (I doubted they would have done - but thought it worth a shot!) but as it isn't getting even that far I can't see a way round this one.

Does anyone have any experience of HK (or even Japanese cards) to see if there's anything to my theory?