Weird credit card charged turned out to be PCBway - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2019, 07:11:59 am
content: Just a heads up in case someone else encounters this.I had a odd charge on my credit card that i couldn't explain and it took me a while to work it out.The only info on credit card wasMerchant = "BALUCE INTERN"Category = Management, Consulting, And Public Relations ServicesTransaction amount = 92.xx USDOriginal Currency = 82.xx EURGoogling seemed to indicate BALUCE INTERNATIONAL was a restaurant in France.But after checking payments/orders around that time i found i was missing a $93 PCBway charge.So that has to be it (with some rounding error due to them charging euro for a usd amount).Why a company in china is charging in EUR i have no idea.Maybe they charge in whatever currency is lower than nominal so they can hold onto it and exchange back when the market stabilizes.

author: EEEnthusiast
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2019, 07:31:32 am
content: This could be money laundering. Instead of crediting the money to China, the money gets credited to some bank account in Europe. The restaurant may be mostly defunct and owned by the same Chinese company which runs PCBWay. Just a guess.

author: Cerebus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2019, 12:06:50 pm
content: I don't think you need to go looking for a nefarious explanation. If the charge had been in USD nobody would blink, it's quite common for vendors from 'minority currency' countries to price exports in a stable, widely traded currency. Once upon a time it was UKL or CHF, it's been USD for a long time and given that the EUR is the shared native currency of dozens of countries it's the obvious successor to the others. A currency based on the economies of dozens of countries is always going to be more stable and predictable than one based on a single country currency. We've all seen currencies take a dive on the international markets when some individual countries' Primeminister/President/Chancellor has opened their mouth and promptly put their foot in it.Plus, a lot of Chinese traders are now registering for VAT for sales made in Europe and I imagine that dealing with the VAT taxation system is made a lot easier if you do your export sales in Euros. Having made that move, it's probably a lot simpler to stick to one 'external' currency for all international sales.

author: Stray Electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2019, 07:39:29 pm
content: Quote from: EEEnthusiast on November 19, 2019, 07:31:32 amNot necessarily money laundering. It could be that PCB way is just a small company and doesn't have a credit card service so they run the charge through another business that does. OTOH if the buyer ever needs to dispute the charge they may have a tough time convincing the CC company that BALUCE INTERNATIONAL is PCBway and not just a restaurant.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2019, 08:33:00 pm
content: Not sure how you stumbled upon a restaurant... This seems to be the following french company:http://entreprises.lefigaro.fr/baluce-international-75/entreprise-844278366doing stuff in import/export, not sure what exactly. Very small and recent company. Judging from the name of the founder, Lucie Zhan, which looks of chinese origin, we can suppose she may be working with chinese companies to import goods from there. Since you seem located in NZ (from your flag), it sounds really odd that PCBWay would choose to work with a small french company for its international business, especially for exporting to NZ, but hey.As to the currency, it's probably charged in EUR because it's a french company.Asking PCBWay about it may be a good idea.

author: Weston
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 21, 2019, 10:10:27 pm
content: Looking through my lab's PCard records, it seems that BALUCE INTERN is pretty consistently used for PCBWay billing, going back to this summer at the very least. The bigger issue is that the invoices often do not exactly match the charged amount, I suspect due to currency conversion and billing delays.Because of the invoice / billing mismatch issue purchasing from PCBWay was banned department wide at my university. PCBWay seems to be one of the bigger offenders for weird billing, but other fabs like JLC also have some odd practices. A common one is discounts not making it onto the invoice.

author: digsys
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 21, 2019, 10:45:14 pm
content: Quote from: PsiHad pretty muchexactlythe same experience a few weeks ago. Had a finance friend try to trace the connection, but failed. It all worked out in the end, so dropped the trace.Had an "unpleasant" run-in with PCBWay, so I don't use them any more anyway.

author: ansonbao
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 22, 2019, 07:08:08 am
content: Here I will explain that:We opened an PCBWay office in France now and they are dealing with our credit card payment system. And payment system company will charge handle fee.For the issue that the invoices often do not exactly match the charged amount, maybe in the invoices not consider the discount charge so this problem happen. Now our engineer is fixing the problem.We are sorry to cause trouble to you，if you meet any problems,please send mail to me anson@pcbway.com

author: thm_w
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 13, 2021, 08:44:00 pm
content: Quote from: StanHansen on October 13, 2021, 05:55:53 pmThey never said they would fix the payment processor name, if that is what you meant.

author: Karrigan
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: April 02, 2023, 09:33:13 am
content: Thanks for sharing your experience with that odd charge on your credit card. It's always frustrating when you see an unexplained transaction on your statement. I've had that happen to me before, and it can take some time to figure out what's going on. It's interesting that you found out the charge was actually from PCBway. It's definitely strange that they charged you in EUR instead of USD. I'm not sure why they would do that either. Maybe it's a currency exchange thing like you mentioned.

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2023, 06:57:06 pm
content: Quote from: Karrigan on April 02, 2023, 09:33:13 amThank you for sharing your thoughts 1.5 years later.May we expect a helpful link from you, to be added soon?

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 02, 2023, 08:33:44 pm
content: Quote from: ebastler on April 02, 2023, 06:57:06 pmNo, it's banned.