Why Was President Obama’s Credit Card Declined? And Which Card Was It?
President Obama credit card declined!
@TomBruneDC reports that Obama’s credit card was declined at a restaurant in New York.
Obama: NY restaurant rejected his rarely used credit card when he was attending UN general assembly. “Fortunately, Michelle had hers.”
As regular readers know, the President has been known to carry a JP Morgan Select card.
The only way to get this card currently is to be a Palladium card cardholder. JP Morgan Select is issued for times when Palladium cardholders want to be ‘low profile’ and not use the heavy metal payment instrument with laser-engraved signature.
It used to be possible to apply for the JP Morgan Select card on its own, although this was exceedingly rare as it was an obscure product.
We do know that the President is a long-standing JP Morgan Chase client with assets sufficient for a JP Morgan Private Client relationship (indepedently of his status for which, no doubt, the bank would make an exception if he didn’t).
One benefit of the Palladium card, I’ve heard, is that it’s never supposed to be declined during normal use.
But since Chase isn’t commenting on whether the President’s data was compromised in the recent security breach at the bank. Perhaps the data breach, combined with infrequent use, as well as the fact that Obama was using the card away from ‘home’, led to the security alert on his account.
The President was able to laugh about it, and suggested it was ‘probably because he doesn’t use it enough’.
He presumably received an email or text from the bank asking him to confirm the charge, but responding to a Chase fraud alert was – quite reasonably – probably not at the top of his priorities list (Ebola and all…). I’m not sure I’d want to be the Chase security specialist who failed to own making sure the President’s card was always usable, however. Since I can imagine they wouldn’t want to lose his business to Citibank, US Bank, Bank of America, or American Express.
(HT: @p_brady)
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