$23,148,855,308,184,500 for a pack of smokes,  is the title of a MSNBC.com article I read this morning.

A New Hampshire man says he swiped his debit card at a gas station to buy a pack of cigarettes and was charged over 23 quadrillion dollars.

Bank of America tells WMUR-TV only the card issuer, Visa, could answer questions. Visa, in turn, referred questions to the bank.

Our Issuing systems have parameters to Delcine transactions over a certain amount, most of our clients set those to less then 1 quadrillion dollars, I believe.   I wonder what the amount on his receipt says, I wonder if this was a POS glitch or a settlement glitch.

In a statement, Visa said the rogue charges affected “fewer than 13,000 prepaid transactions” and resulted from a “temporary programming error at Visa Debit Processing Services … [which] caused some transactions to be inaccurately posted to a small number of Visa prepaid accounts.”

via cnn

[Update]

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