Suspicious card behaviour
October 26, 2004Anyone who has any small degree of control over their merchant gateway will know that there are two main areas through which fraud can be detected.
The first is incorrect card details - but a problem here is that the international banking system does not support the full billing address. And a number of circumstances can set up a red flag on the order when none is required. For example, sometimes the country of origin for the card does not match the billing address country - which will happen if a Canadian citizen pays from a US bank account.
Another indicator of possible fraud is unusual card usage. In short, if a card is suddenly used more frequently and for higher cost orders, the activity is noted as suspicious and may set up a warning besides an order.
Yesterday evening I received a call from my bank looking to investigate how my Switch card was being used. The truth of the matter is simply that - after months of frugality - I allowed myself a little spending spree for new clothing for the family. Add to that a few bills at once - and all on top of general business and personal/family expenditure - and you have a pattern of card use the bank considered worth investigating further.
I’m certainly happy to be approached and such security issues looked at- obviously, it’s for my own protection. I just sincerely hope that it doesn’t impact my current payments - I have a lot of orders on recurring billing, and it would certainly not be pleasant to find any number of them bounced due to warning flags for suspicious card activity. So far so good. :)