The payment is tied to her car. This is a different situation to purchasing a good. That may account for the lack of any enquiry about differences in name/address.

buteman

The security check is the correct entry of the PIN, that's all the shop is concerned with, if that's entered correctly then they get the money for the transaction from the issuing back - simple as that.

In the days of signatures things in theory were a bit more strict, but which shop worker diligently checked every signature - I know I didn't, although I always checked the gender of the card holder, and caught out a couple of people using stolen cards this way, one time I caught a girl using a card in the name of my neighbour who'd recently passed away...

john bunyan

I was responding to buteman, hence the mention of PIN

For internet shopping, most reputable sites will use multiple checks, for instance many sites use Verified By Visa / Mastercard Securecode to request a password that is set up by the card-holder the first time a card is used on an account.

Other sites will only deliver to the card billing address for the first transaction.

In the case of the original post, if there's a charge-back on the transaction the DVLA can withdraw the tax disc so there'll be all kinds of problems when you come to insure / MOT the car...

VISA servers have some very sophisticated software running. They monitor your spending patterns,and if anything unusual is spotted you'll often get a call.

It happened to me a couple of months ago - my card provider called my mobile number to check that it was me who made a 'Card-holder not present' purchase over the phone. The person I spoke to said that the payment server had a slight suspicion over the transaction, so it flagged the fact on her screen.