Comment Re:Have to punch it in at the gas stations now (Score 1) 461
AFAIK from implementing an AVS system at a previous job, the zip codes aren't required because there are so many older systems that don't support them. The retailer gets a discounted credit card processing rate for each transaction (or maybe if X% of transactions include zip) to encourage them to use zipcode verification.
I'm not sure what the point of asking is if they aren't going to reject it anyway, but they may use the zipcode along with other info (eg. location of the purchase, retailer's sketchiness quotient, purchase amount, etc.) to selectively reject transactions.