I recently attempted a $2000+ purchase from a reputable and well-known-in-this-forum Chinese vendor and was unable to make the payment. The online money transfer service for international transfers had been halted by the bank as of January last year, the bank claimed the SWIFT code for the company did not exist, Alibaba's support, as communicated by the vendor, confirmed that the bank did not wish to make the transfer and therefore gave this error message (i.e., the SWIFT code was actually valid), and my credit card required verification via a code sent by SMS to a phone number which I have not had in over a decade. Unfortunately, I have no phone capable of receiving an SMS at present, so that is where my purchase plan died. Useless credit card. I now know that I cannot purchase anything from Alibaba. Or China.
Now, I do not know if my credit card has been canceled simply because I was unable to complete the verification check, but I doubt that it was.