credit card

Credit Card Data Theft: They Can't Steal What You Don't Have

2007-03-12T20:20:00.000-07:00

LAS VEGAS, March 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Shift4 Corporation, a leading provider of enterprise payment solutions, offers a certified and proven system that protects merchants against the theft of personal credit card information. Not affiliated with any financial institution,
processor or card brand, Shift4 works directly
with merchants to help them efficiently manage credit card payment acceptance and become compliant with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards. Shift4's breakthrough technology has been deployed with thousands of locations across the United States.
"Recent security breaches and theft of personal credit card data are costly reminders that conventional security is vulnerable to attack because personal data is retained within merchant systems," said J. D. Oder II, Shift4 Vice President/Chief Technology Officer. "Encryption alone is not the answer because the keys associated with it are never completely protected. The best way to secure data is to not store data at all. In fact, we tell our customers, 'They can't steal what you don't have.'"
Shift4 Corporation's $$$ ON THE NET(R) provides high-speed and low-cost authorizations and settlements for credit, debit, check, private label and gift card transactions. This system is based on Tokenization technology -- developed and publicly released by Shift4 -- that provides a greater level of security by removing all usable personal card data from the entire transaction process, including point-of-sale devices.
Tokenization is superior to encryption because it substitutes a unique identifier (a token) for a card number, so sensitive personal card data is never in the system. The merchant swipes the card and sends the data through a gateway to a processor and receives back an approval. Credit card data is converted to a token: a globally unique, randomized representation of credit card data that is 16 characters long. Only the token is stored in the system.
"The merchant does not need the card number or data past the initial request, so storing this information is unnecessary. The entire liability to protect the card data is now on the gateway, where it should be," Oder said. "When there is no useful data in the system, there's nothing for data thieves to access and use. Further, if no data is stored on site, the merchant has a significantly reduced PCI compliance burden," Oder added.
$$$ ON THE NET is certified to be in compliance with all card association regulations, including AVS and CVV2. This application and Shift4's data center are recognized by Visa USA as compliant with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards.
About Shift4 Corporation
Shift4, a leading developer of secure financial transaction processing software and services, provides web-based, real-time enterprise payment solutions for leaders in the hospitality, retail, foodservices, auto rental and e-commerce markets. Through connectivity to most major processors, $$$ ON THE NET provides both high speed and low cost authorizations and settlements for credit, debit, check, private label and gift card transactions. $$$ ON THE NET also includes the ability to access, review and edit transactions prior to settlement, as well as a searchable, 24-month archive of transactions for reporting and charge back defense. For more information, contact Randy Carr at (702) 597-2480 ext. 3433 or visit Shift4 online at http://www.shift4.com/.

Police Look For Man In Counterfeit Credit Card Scheme

2007-03-12T20:18:00.000-07:00

INDIANAPOLIS -- Police on Monday released a surveillance picture of a man they said is involved in a credit card scheme that has cost Indianapolis businesses thousands of dollars.
Investigators said the man used a counterfeit credit card to make a purchase Jan. 2 at the Marsh store in the 5800 block of West 38th Street.
Police said eight different cards were used to bilk businesses out of thousands of dollars in merchandise since last August. Some of the cards were used several times at the same Marsh store.
The man involved in at least one of the cases is 6 feet tall and weighs about 185 pounds.
Police asked anyone with information to call Crime Stoppers at 317-262-TI

Avoiding the high price of plastic

2007-03-12T20:14:00.000-07:00

CNN) -- Accumulating credit card debt can happen in a flash as a result of interest rate increases and hidden fees. CNN personal finance editor Gerri Willis spoke to CNN's Rob Marciano about how to avoid getting caught in an endless cycle of credit card debt.
Marciano: So how do you keep the price of plastic from getting out of control?
Willis: Tip number one, universal default allows issuers to raise your interest rate on your credit card if you're late paying any other bills. You can avoid cards that do this by getting a card at Cardratings.com.
They let you know who charges that. Look in your card holder agreement if you've already got a credit card for the area that mentions default pricing. Now if your default pricing is based on your credit card report, your credit card probably has a universal default policy.
The good news is this practice may be falling out of favor. Citigroup, for example, recently announced it was getting rid of the practice.
Marciano: One of the more confusing things, Gerri, is when you get your credit card statement, you pay for part of the bill and then they charge you interest on what seems to be almost the whole thing. Is that true?
Willis: Yes and double billing when it comes to interest is really frustrating. It happens when the credit card company charges interest on the sum of your balance for [the current] month and last month, regardless of whether you've already paid it off.
You're most vulnerable to this if you occasionally carry a balance on your credit card. Make sure your bank calculates your finance charge in one billing cycle. Look for the phrase "average daily balance" on your credit card agreement.
Marciano: What about late fees? Can you get around those? Sometimes you can just pick up the phone can't you and beg for it off?
Willis: Well, you can. Late fees are on the rise and penalty interest rates, if you are late, can be over 30 percent in some cases. So it's really onerous. Here's an easy way to avoid late fees -- automate your payments online. But if you know your payment is going to be late, you may be able to avoid that fee if you call ahead. Credit card companies may give you a reprieve.
Marciano: What about you get these checks in the mail from some credit card company that says it's going give you 0 percent interest for six months and you say, this is a great deal. I'm going to transfer my balances to this card. What should we look out for there?
Willis: Well, there's a hidden little problem there. Transferring a high credit card balance to a card with low rates can be a great move, but it's becoming more expensive. Balance transfer fees used to be capped at $75. But today, credit card companies are getting rid of caps on balance transfer fees.
To find out if you're going to be a victim of these fees, look at your credit card agreement. If there's a reference to a minimum fee for a balance transfer, but there's no reference to a maximum fee, chances are you're on the hook for one of these fees. You need to know what it is. Call the company and ask specifically what they're going to charge you.
Marciano: Of course, try to pay it off every month if at all possible.
Willis: Bottom line, you know, look, you've got to pay this thing down to make sure you're paying the fewest fees possible. And pay on time.

Are credit cards evil, or just dangerous?

2007-03-10T22:08:00.000-08:00

Yes, plastic can get you into financial trouble, and the credit card companies often make that easy. But let's be honest: If there are problems, blame only yourself.

By Liz Pulliam Weston

I hate defending credit card companies.
It's like sticking up for used-car salesmen, or Congress. Saying anything nice makes you feel like a patsy, since their defects are so readily apparent.
But in the debate over whether credit cards are inherently evil, I must proclaim myself an advocate for the purported devils.
The idea that plastic is a snake in your wallet, tempting you to sin, is probably as old as the first Diners Club card (issued in 1950, if you care). Today, the more refined argument made by some attorneys is that credit cards are defective by their very design, a point that's argued in "Why it pays to leave home without it," by recent University of Illinois College of Law graduate Adam Goldstein. He argues that the cards are products, not services, and are designed specifically to take advantage of consumer vulnerabilities.
Most arguments against credit cards note, correctly, that it's easy to get in over your head with credit card debt. That's true for a variety of reasons, mainly:
Screening is lax. Are you breathing? Then chances are extremely good you can get a credit card, and another one, and another one . . . and oh, that credit limit is looking a little tight; let me raise that for you. Unlike most other lenders, credit card issuers don't pay that much attention to your income, employment history, level of financial sophistication or ability to handle the credit lines they're thrusting upon you. They're just counting on enough folks paying their bills to more than offset those who don't.
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Minimum payments are low. You only have to pay a tiny fraction of what you actually owe each month. In fact, until regulators finally forced them to change, some credit card issuers set minimum payments so low that they didn't even cover all the interest accrued that month, let alone make any progress on paying down the principal. Since you're not forced to feel the full brunt of your indebtedness, it's easy to deny your balances are a problem -- at least until that awful day when you can no longer scrape up the minimum -- and then you're really in trouble.
Debt creeps up incrementally. You sign up for a mortgage, and it's hard to miss all those zeros; you know you're in debt, big time. By contrast, the incremental nature of growing credit card balances can lure you into complacency. It's possible to spend your way into bankruptcy $10 or $20 at a time.
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Video: The cure for the middle class crunchIt's not your imagination, there is a squeeze on the middle class. MSN Money's Liz Pulliam Weston explains how it's possible for anyone to get in the middle class -- and stay there.

We spend more with plastic. We've all seen the studies showing that people, on average, spend more freely when using credit cards than when using cash. Then again, not all of us overspend, and some of my readers say they actually spend more using cash. It's the green, not the plastic, that burns holes in their pockets and disappears without a trace into various merchants' tills.
Then there's the bankruptcy rate, whose meteoric rise pretty much parallels the unprecedented increase in credit extended to Americans starting in the 1990s.
Clearly, credit cards can be dangerous in the wrong hands. But those arguing that credit cards are evil or defective usually go astray by insisting that credit cards are dangerous in the average person's hands.
They typically trot out misleading statistics, like the one about the average American having $9,000 or so in credit card debt. I'll summarize the reality here:
Only 43% or so of households carry any credit card debt, according to Federal Reserve statistics, and half of those owe less than $2,200.
Only one household in 14 carry more than $10,000 in credit card debt.
Only one household in 50 carry more than $20,000 in credit card debt.

Whenever I cite those figures, which are from the latest Survey of Consumer Finances, conducted in 2004, I hear from readers who insist the statistics aren't true. The argument usually goes something like, "Those numbers can't be right because I have a lot of credit card debt, and so do all my friends!"
This, in turn, reminds me of the untreated alcoholic who insists that she drinks like everybody else, not comprehending that her universe of comparison consists solely of the rummies on the adjoining barstools.
Sure, plenty of people have serious problems with debt. That "one in 50 households" figure above represents more than 2 million American homes.
But most people either don't have credit card debt or have relatively small amounts. Plenty of us use plastic responsibly, as a convenience.
If you have big balances, in other words, you're not the norm -- you have a problem that needs to get fixed. Blaming the credit card companies might make you feel better, but it doesn't get you off the hook.
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Not that we can't hold credit card companies responsible for their more egregious practices. Bars and restaurants are, after all, held responsible when they over-serve drunken patrons, and card companies' credit-issuing binge over the past 20 years certainly holds some parallels to that situation.
I've written about some of the worst practices, most recently in "Credit card companies' evil tricks" ("evil" was the headline writer's word choice, by the way; mine was "foul"). I'd particularly like to see two changes:
A return to good old-fashioned usury laws. Back in the day, many states capped how much lenders could charge borrowers. Those so-called usury laws lost their teeth in 1978, thanks to a U.S. Supreme Court decision. A federal cap on credit card interest rates at, say, 10 points over prime (which would total 18.25% as of this writing) would put an end to seriously outrageous interest rates and make issuers a little more careful about screening applicants, since they couldn't charge loan-shark rates to compensate for taking on high-risk clients.
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Real credit education. The "just say no" approach doesn't work. The ability to get and use credit rationally is an important financial skill in today's world. The prudent, regular and responsible use of credit cards can help build and maintain credit scores, which are used by most mainstream lenders in granting home, auto and business loans. But people need to know that credit card balances should be paid off in full each and every month. And they won't get that message if the schools or other institutions doing the teaching rely on materials prepared by the credit card companies -- as some do.
By the way, if you have credit card debt, the time to take care of it is now. The articles and tools at MSN Money's Manage Debt Decision Center can get you started, and you can get your questions answered on the Ask a Credit Counselor or the Your Money message boards. Knowing that it's you, and not the cards, that got you in trouble is an important first step. Good luck.
Liz Pulliam Weston's column appears every Monday and Thursday, exclusively on MSN Money. She also answers reader questions in the Your Money message board.