Minimising The Risk Of Unauthorised Credit Card Transactions

Monitoring Your Credit Card Account

One of the most important activities that a credit card holder can do is regular statement and activity monitoring of their account. Security breaches can occur from illegal activities against your account or through potential processing errors. In either case a mistake or unauthorised charge may have been applied to your account which if disputed in time can be removed from your account. Both major credit card companies – VISA and MasterCard – offer no liability on accounts that have had unauthorised transactions posted to them, but only if they are notified as early as possible.

Protect yourself from loss, theft and identity crime

Secure Sentinel gives peace of mind with its SecureIdentity by providing you with a personal credit file to keep track of your credit activities. Any suspicious transaction is immediately reported to arrest attempts of credit card theft.

Features of Secure Identity – with one single call you can:

• Cancel any affected credit cards or other financial cards (including cover from the time they were lost to the time you notified them, until the time they notify your banks etc.
• Arrange replacement cards
• Place a temporary block on your mobile phone that is registered with Secure Identity
• Help you with item details for a police claim or insurance claim
• If you are eligible, you can even receive a cash advance fo $1,000 AUD in the case of an emergency
• Organise the safe return of any lost or stolen registered items that were recovered
• Give you help and advice to get through the situation as smoothly as possible with the least amount of stress.

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Credit Card Policies

Every credit card has its own policies, rules, fees, and regulations. One thing that they do have in common is what is known as a zero liability policy for unauthorised transactions. The customer has to announce within an acceptable time period that a potential security breach may have occurred, as detected by unrecognised charges are on their account statement. Once it is verified that the charges are fraudulent then the bad balance is removed. If the charges are determined to be from theft or fraudulent activities than the credit card will be cancelled and replaced. The exact way that this process would be handled is explained within the particular card’s information.

How Unauthorised Charges Occur

There are different ways that an unauthorised transaction may appear on a credit card statement. The first possibility is that an equipment error may occur during the actual payment processing and accidental charges may appear. Next, the more common reason for unauthorised transactions: security violations such as identity theft and fraud. Regular statement monitoring is one of the fastest ways to detect unauthorised transactions. Once an error is detected and reported, the processing company will verify the claims of fraudulent charges and have the balances in question removed.

Credit card processing companies are aware of the amount of theft and other fraud charges to customers’ credit cards and are more than happy to investigate any allegations of unauthorised transactions. Both of the major processing companies, VISA and MasterCard have a zero liability policy for their customers in the event of a mistaken or fraudulent transaction. This means that the customer is not responsible for any disputed charge that is determined to be unauthorised. This adds an additional sense of security to credit card holders knowing that the processing companies are working their hardest to protect them as customers.

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