Of course, they will say it's to prevent misuse of stolen cards. But they never did this much before, unless maybe you went to a foreign country, and even that was relatively recent. If you use the card you bought a travel ticket to the new location with, or used to buy gas and food along the way, it usually helps prevent this, but not always. A relative who used to live in another city just 200 miles away, and now goes there occasionally, now gets a card frozen on every visit, and has to call to re-verify it. This even if the card was used to buy the bus ticket, and even to buy some food along the way.

I think this is preparation for a time when we have gone cashless and the cards or whatever we use then will only be valid in the "zone" we are supposed to stay in, like the zones in the 2000-2002 TV series Dark Angel. (That was a series about an America under martial law after a nationwide EMP attack...ten years after, in fact!)