We seem to be having a rash of debit card skimming at local restaurants. The local Police have been contacted, filters tightened to stop fraudulent transactions, and cards reissued if the customer used their card at one of the restaurants even if fraud has not occured on their account. Also, Visa has been contacted to report the problem. Since this is new to us, are we doing everything to stop the fraud and our losses? Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!

You've done just about everything we can think of doing.

Are you sure it's a card skim? Unfortunately some restuarant POS systems have vulnerabilities which have been exploited by hackers getting into their system. We're on a second go around with a local one, and some cardholders are on their second or third reissue.

It's frustrating; they have not been able to fixed the problem, and unless the breach is made public, we cannot tell the customers who it is, and the losses mount up. Visa's ADCR program does not begin to reimburse for the losses and expense

The only other component is customer awareness - raising their attention to review the account and immediately report discrepancies.

If you do a Google search on "debit card fraud" you will get plenty of materials which you can use to build your customer communications. FTC I'm not overly impressed with the presentation in this one, but note that it mentions not using your card in situations where it will be out of your sight; e.g. when the server leaves the table process the charge.

I'm curious about the prohibitions against disclosing problems to customers that BetsyS referred to, but it's outside my experience. I will note that a friend who is a trust officer routinely used a debit card for entertaining at a local restaurant and his bank (not a small one) called and told him to please use his credit card there from now on.

When I dine out at a restaurant I am not familiar with, I routinely pay the check at the cashier or host desk where I can keep an eye on the card. Sometimes people look at me like I have two heads, but it gives me a small measure of assurance. Admittedly, it does nothing to address unsecure data at the merchant once the card is swiped. but it can cut back on pocket-skimmers that some wait-staff have been known to use.