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I live in Mexico and I've got my first debit card. I have three names. In total (counting spaces) I need 21 characters to write them. After realizing that the last letter of my last name is missing in my personal bank information and on the automatic emails I receive from the bank, I went to the bank to try to fix it. I was told that there's a character limit for writing names, and since my name was too long, it was cropped. Other important information (like my address and the Mexican equivalent of the SSN) are spelled correctly.

They asked me not to worry and let it pass, but I don't feel comfortable with my name being wrong. I just linked my account information to PayPal (where I had no problems writing my full name), and I'm worried that this disparity will give rise to problems in the future.

Is it normal to have the personal information cropped? I'm not sure whether the limit on characters is a real thing, but every time I go to ask for a change I get the same answer.

Edit: Just to clarify, I have three first names (say Jane1, Jane2, Jane3) and two family names (Doe1, Doe2). My problem was with the last first name being cropped.

Cave Johnson
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Amelian
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2 Answers2

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Is it normal to have the personal information cropped? I'm not sure whether the limit on characters is a real thing, but every time I go to ask for a change I get the same answer.

It is and it is. In the older systems in the banking world (those based on the good old IBM Mainframe systems) there was definitely a limited pre-allocated space for names, which was shorter than names are in many cultures (not just Mexican, long names exist in some European countries, India, Middle East). So the names are cropped or abbreviated.

On credit/debit cards the name is embossed/printed on the card, where the space is physically restricted, and is also encoded in the magnetic stripe and the chip, where the space is also limited, so there you have space constraints as well.

You can consider abbreviating middle names, if it is possible, otherwise... You're stuck with the limitations of the system. If the name is not misspelled, just the last character is missing, then you can provide the same explanation if anyone asks.

That said, 21 characters is not a lot. For payment cards, the name field is up to 26 characters, including spaces (see ISO/IEC 7813). But if there are separate fields for first and last names in the bank's system, it may be split 10/16 for example, or something similar.

littleadv
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This is a partial answer, addressing some practical concerns you may have. I work for a payment processing company in Europe, but I believe online payments standards are very similar throughout the Western world.

I would generally just follow directions like "please input your name as it appears on your card" literally - write exactly what is printed.

Modern online payment systems use a probability-based system for identifying the cardholder. It would be unlikely that an automated system would reject a payment because of one missing character in a middle name (so unlikely that I'd consider such a system misconfigured). Typically you can completely omit the middle names without issue, or abbreviate your first name (e.g. Alexander to Alex).

It is possible that the transaction would be flagged for some sort of extra review, but this would normally be invisible to you unless it lead to your bank automatically requesting confirmation of the transaction. Large or unusual transactions are more likely to be investigated. This wouldn't have any impact on you beyond the call/message/app notification you get asking you to confirm the transaction.

aantia
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