Why does Aliexpress always cancel my payment with UBA Mastercard?

Posted by Felix Okoli on Wednesday September 10, 2014 at 11:2:58:

Someone recently asked my why his UBA Mastercard was not accepted when doing his shopping on Aliexpress. He was using a UBA issued Naira Mastercard but it was nto accepted.

Well, I have to confess that I've never used a Naira Mastercard on Aliexpress before and the last time I tried a Naira card was with a Visa Naira and that itself was not accepted. I only use a Prepaid USD Visa card on Aliexpress and the one issued by Zenith bank works well for me.

One thing I've noticed about Naira Visa or Mastercard is that they are mostly not enabled for making online payments outside Nigeria by default but they can be enabled if you request for the service at your bank. Just tell your bank to activate it for use on Aliexpress and it should be working.

Nigerian banks, in a bid to protect their customers from fraudulent foreign purchases don't automatically enable their cards for such websites. I had teh same problem when I tried to use my Union bank Visa Naira card on Amazon and it was rejected. It was later accepted when I asked my bank to activate it for shopping at Amazon and they did.

If your Naira Visa or Mastercard is not accepted on any foreign website, just tell your bank and they would activate it for that site. If the card was in USD or GBP, it would have been activated already.

Just because your card is a Naira card doesn't mean you can't use it globally for making online payments. You can probably use a Naira card on Aliexpress for shopping but I've not tried it before and when I do, I'll update this post.