Visa tests SMS and email alerts on credit card transactions
By Dusan Belic on Saturday, August 30th, 2008 at 10:28 AM PST In Announcements
Visa along with 8 North American financial institutions — 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 — is initiating a pilot program, involving 2,000 participants to test the delivery of real-time notification alerts on Visa accounts.
The program is designed to “enhance the consumer payment experience” by alerting cardholders in (near) real-time of transaction activity on their Visa account. Participants in the pilot may choose to receive the following notification alerts from Visa via email or SMS:
- cash withdrawal from an ATM
- a transaction initiated cross border
- an Internet or telephone transaction, and
- a transaction that exceeds an amount that has been chosen by the cardholder.
Once they receive an alert, cardholders can verify the transaction details and eventually contact their bank to help stop further transactions on the card. The service is designed to help cardholders keep closer track of their transactions and spending levels as they go about their daily routine.
[Via: slashphone]
This will make for good fraud prevention. If a card fraud has taken place and can be relayed back to the merchant as well, credit card fraud could be significantly reduced.
I’ve been using services of this type for at least 8 years now. Most banks in Hungary have it. Example here:
http://www.cib.hu/services/retail/ebanking/mobilbank/mobilbank
This is a great service to prevent credit card fraud. I was a victim last week. I am surprise to see the name of my bank that provide this service and they do not know anything about it. Disappointed!