What is this scam? Card CVV entered incorrectly too many times [migrated]
I have a Visa debit card that I use mainly for travel (it has low FX fees).
The other day I received loads of notifications from the corresponding app: 2 with 'The CVV was incorrect', followed by 4 with 'The CVV was entered incorrectly too many times'. Most of these were for £0, one was for £1. The seemed to come from some pub in England in a town I had never been to. There was also one transaction right after in the US (for 0$, also declined), and another for 6$ in the US.
I have of course frozen the card right away, but I don't understand what the scammers were trying to do here. If they had cloned the card when I used it on my travels they would have had the correct CVV. Is this just some bulk attack where they try huge numbers of card numbers with random CVVs hoping to get some correct (given that CVVs are quite short?)?
