| That's possible on most payment card networks that have their historical roots in credit or "dual message" processing. Historically, the default assumption was that a credit card was always good for payment; the issuer took the credit risk for the cases where that was not the case. Ubiquitous electronic/real-time authorizations (a concept also known as "zero floor limit") have changed that default assumption and liability, but are a relatively new feature for credit cards. Since debit cards in the US usually feature at least one international "credit" scheme/brand (credit in the historical and processing sense, not in terms of actually being funded that way), there can accordingly also be force-posts. The issuer can trivially charge back any such charge in case of insufficient funds, though, just like they can with checks. This is mostly true for credit cards as well, by the way! For historical reasons, some merchants (like hotels or car rental agencies) treat the two differently, but there is no formal basis for the distinction anymore. There is still a practical difference though: Opening and maintaining a credit card usually requires having a non-disastrous credit score; the fact that somebody can present one that still allows authorizations by the bank to go through can therefore serve as a weak proxy for that customer's credit. tl;dr: The merchant (or their bank) is almost always liable for this, not the issuing bank, with very few exceptions. |