It’s the busiest shopping time of the year…the holidays. Some of us may be using cash to pay for our purchases to make sure that we stick to our budget, but most of us will be using our credit cards for our holiday purchases.
Tips on how to Prevent Credit Card Fraud during the Holidays
During the holidays it is a good idea to verify all of our previous day’s transactions online every morning. This will ensure that we keep a close eye on our daily transactions, and therefore we can detect and prevent credit card fraud early.
Before we sign our credit card receipt in the stores, it is very important to make sure that the transaction amount displayed on the keypad matches the real amount of our transaction. It is a very busy shopping time of the year, and sales people are trying to process all of our transactions as quickly as possible, this can lead to simple errors. With long waiting lines and overworked sales people $50.02 could easily end up being $500.20.
What to do if our card is Lost or Stolen
If your credit card is lost or stolen we should contact our financial institution as soon as possible. Our financial institution will verify all recent transactions with us to make sure that there has been no fraud on our credit card. It is very important to have all information regarding our credit card when we call to report our credit card lost or stolen, otherwise the financial institution may think that we are the fraudster.
It would be very helpful if we could find a recent statement or if we could log into our account online so that we will have all information regarding our credit card. Our financial institution could ask us any number of identification questions such as the credit limit on our credit card, our last transaction amounts, as well as the last payment made to our credit card.
What to do if our credit card has Fraud
If there are fraudulent transactions on our credit card, we should contact our financial institution as soon as possible. All reportedly fraudulent transactions on our credit card will be credited to our account. After a fraud investigation, if the transactions are determined not to be fraudulent they will be added back onto our credit card.
Having fraud on our credit card can be a huge inconvenience. Our financial institution will send us a new credit card, with a new credit card number and a new expiration date. It is our responsibility to contact all merchants that charge our credit card for monthly payments, and provide them with our new credit card information.
As soon as we report our credit card lost or stolen the credit card is instantly cancelled. This means that we may be without a credit card until our new credit card arrives in the mail. Of course it may be inconvenient, but it is a lot better than thousands of dollars in credit card fraud.
(Photo by declan)
Kristina Tahnyak
Tahnya is a Certified Financial Planner and former Investment Advisor turned marketing and communications professional She holds a degree from Concordia University, is debt free and currently works in the field of digital marketing.
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