Credit-and-Debit Card Fraud Protection – Keeping the Bad Guys at Bay
by Shane Ensminger, Vice President, Director of Security for Central Bank
Fraud protection and detection is serious business at Central Bank. The recent data breach at Equifax is a good example of how vulnerable your personal information is. Some 145.5 million credit records have been compromised. This is personal information like dates of birth and social security numbers, which bad guys can use later to open credit card accounts.
There are a lot of tools you can put in place to help you determine if you’ve been a victim of fraud, sooner rather than later. In this article, I will give some practical advice to protect your money, which you work hard for.
CREDIT- AND DEBIT-CARD FRAUD
Last year, credit card and debit card fraud in the U.S. cost banks nearly $10.9 billion. The number this year is growing. What does that tell you? It tells us the bad guys are getting better. But so are we. There are many tools we offer to help you discover that you may have become a victim of fraud.
If you’ve shopped online or used a credit card at a store, it’s possible your account information has been compromised. Major retailers ranging from Target to Home Depot have been in the news because of security breaches. With all the personal information exposed by data breaches in recent years, could you be one of the victims?
FREE* SERVICES FROM CENTRAL BANK
At Central Bank, we take a hi-tech approach to protecting you. Here are some of the free services that we provide at Central Bank to help you keep track of your accounts and possible fraud:
For Credit Cards:
CardManager: Simply sign up online, and you can track all of your consumer credit card purchases. You can activate features like travel alerts. This tells us where you’re traveling, so we’ll know if purchases made in Florida or New York or even Europe are legitimate purchases.
Visa® Purchase Alerts: At Central Bank, we issue Visa credit cards. One benefit is to sign up for purchase alerts. Every time you make a purchase with your Visa card, you’ll receive a text or email. So, if you’re watching TV at home and you get an alert that you just purchased something at a department store, you’ll know something’s fishy.
For Debit Cards:
CardValet: This is for debit-card users. With the CardValet mobile app, you can set rules and alerts for the use of your debit card. For example, you can limit one-time purchases to any set amount – say anything under $100. Anything over that is denied. You can also make the debit card usable only at certain stores or in certain geographic areas, such as Lexington. You can also set alerts so that you know each time your debit card is used. If you get an alert for a purchase you didn’t make, you can alert the bank right away.
Visit centralbank.com to learn more about how you can take advantage of these tools.
FOCUS ON THE CUSTOMER
At Central Bank, we have a well-trained staff steeped in law-enforcement experience. This experience helps us to investigate fraud. We then use the knowledge we obtain to push for solutions using our experience and connections in law enforcement.
Combining this dedication to catching fraudsters with the tools available to our customers, we hope to help catch fraud early in order to minimize the consequences of fraud for our customers.
Together, with your help, we believe we can accomplish this.
We believe that’s the advantage banking with Central Bank— we are a community bank with big-bank muscle, dedicated to the customers we serve. Want to find out more about how we help protect our customers? Just contact me at SEnsminger@centralbank.com or give a call to 859-253-6000.