Visa Piloting Electronic Alert Program to Help Identify Suspicious Transactions
August 19, 2008 By Justin McHenry
Visa announced yesterday the launch of a pilot program for delivering real-time alerts to consumers based on triggers that may indicate when a credit card transaction is fraudulent. The alerts identifying potentially suspicious activity would be sent to consumers via e-mail or cell phone text messages.
Visa will be working with a number of major banks during the testing of the system, including PNC Bank, SunTrust Bank, U.S. Bank, Wachovia, and Wells Fargo in the United States, and Royal Bank of Canada, TD Bank Financial Group, and Vancity in Canada. The test will include up to 2,000 total credit card customers who will receive the alerts.
The program would not alert a consumer after every credit card transaction, but only after those meeting certain criteria that might raise suspicion. Those criteria could include transactions that exceed an amount the card holder has chosen as a “trigger”, transactions from outside the customer’s home country, Internet or telephone transactions, or a cash withdrawal from an ATM machine.
Customers receiving an alert could then either verify the transaction in question or contact the bank to stop further transactions on the card.
