Hello all, I've not had much experience with situations of counterfeited visa debit cards. The situation is, 5 transactions hit my customers account, the location is in Mexico, she's here, has her card in her possession, but the transactions show the card was present. I understand, the customers's not liable for the transactions, and I understand that I can attempt to chargeback the transactions to the merchant but as long as they present me back with a signed receipt (regardless of what the signature looks like) the bank is out the $$. Is there anything I'm missing due to the fact that this appears to be a counterfeited card? Is is reasonable to assume that the card was counterfeited, or is there something more I should look at? Should I be concerned that my cardholder data was compromised somehow, or just that the customer must have used their card somewhere that the data was captured? Thanks for everyone's help.

If your customer has possession of her original card, and the questionable transactions show 'card present,' then it is reasonable to assume the card was counterfeited. I wouldn't necessarily be concerned about the cardholder's personal data being compromised; most counterfeiters are only interested in use of the card (often under a different name--check the merchant receipt). Merchants are not the only source for card compromises, but it might be worth investigating if you are seeing a pattern of these transactions with other cardholders, to try and determine a CPP.

At the risk of pointing out the obvious, I assume you have canceled and hot-listed the card and issued a new one.

Yes, we did that immediately. I've had experience with other types of fraud (lost/stolen cards, etc), just not with a claim of this type. I just wanted to make sure there wasn't something else I was missing, or something more I should be thinking of. Thanks for both of your comments. I appreciate your help.

One more thing to consider: unlike claims where a card was actually lost/stolen, a counterfeit means that the card information was compromised somewhere. If you can identify the point of compromise, you might have compliance rights that would allow you to recover some funds from whomever was careless with your customer's information (since you are correct that if the merchant supplies a valid receipt the bank will not win chargeback).

Thank you Becka. We'll definately see if we can figure that out.

Good luck with that. Unless your losses were significant (>$50,000), it might cost as much to investigate and litigate.