Kudos to Westpac. I had a message on my mobile phone this afternoon asking me to call Westpac Card Services.

A bit of a hassle, but I followed the prompts, identified myself and got through to someone after about five minutes.

They wanted to check that a Mastercard transaction was legitimate.

It was A$38 to Yahoo! Because it had been entered manually and seemed suspicious, they were checking if I had authorised it.

I renewed my Flickr Pro account this afternoon, so the transaction was correct.

I appreciated the fact Westpac bothered to check with me, especially over a relatively small amount, and told the girl that. I hope they call to verify if someone dodgy tries to bill me for several hundred dollars or more!

The surprise of the whole matter was the arse falling out of the Australian dollar.

The amount I authorised was US$25. I just checked the exchange rate and the Aussie dollar is only fetching 65 US cents. They were near parity a few months ago.