In the 1990s credit cards were pretty uncommon in Europe. Most shops that a student would shop at did not accept any.
When I visited the US I was shocked that you could do all kind of business by just telling or typing in the number on the phone. I soon learned that cheaper businesses (e.g international calls at discount rates) did not accept my foreign card. However, more expensive businesses (like AT&T to stay at the same example) just accepted the number, no questions asked. CVV wasn't in use. A concept that exceeded my imagination, credit card numbers are not that secret, everone working at a checkout could collect them. When reading this I guess they would have also accepted phantasy numbers with a matching checksum.
My conclusion back then was: For those operating at comfortable margins some loss by fraud is just priced in. Those offering cheap prices don't have the luxury to do so, so they reject everything that is not easy to verify, like e.g. foreign cards.
When I visited the US I was shocked that you could do all kind of business by just telling or typing in the number on the phone. I soon learned that cheaper businesses (e.g international calls at discount rates) did not accept my foreign card. However, more expensive businesses (like AT&T to stay at the same example) just accepted the number, no questions asked. CVV wasn't in use. A concept that exceeded my imagination, credit card numbers are not that secret, everone working at a checkout could collect them. When reading this I guess they would have also accepted phantasy numbers with a matching checksum.
My conclusion back then was: For those operating at comfortable margins some loss by fraud is just priced in. Those offering cheap prices don't have the luxury to do so, so they reject everything that is not easy to verify, like e.g. foreign cards.