NFIB

Protect Your Customers' Credit
04/ 15/ 2002


Credit and charge card fraud is more common than the average person realizes. Television programs and the newspaper regularly relate horrifying tales of people who receive huge bills and have their credit rating severely damaged as a result of unauthorized and illegal use of their credit cards. Most people fear that they will be victimized this way if their card is lost or stolen. In today's Workshop Edith Helmich discusses precautions that businesses can implement to protect their customers.

Business owners need to be aware that the market place is the hotbed for a lot of the fraud that occurs. A dishonest clerk can make an extra imprint of a transaction and use it to make personal charges. A thief can sift through the trash to find discarded receipts or flawless carbons that identify complete account numbers and names. Most business site vulnerability, however, is simply the result of oversight or carelessness.

Although it is probably not possible to prevent all credit card fraud, there are precautions that businesses can implement to protect their customers:

-- A background check should be completed for all employees who are involved with credit card transactions.

--Clerks should compare the signatures of every transaction with the signature on the card.

-- Clerks should ask for photo identification before charging large purchases or when they are uneasy about the transaction, for any reason.

-- Incorrect receipts should be voided immediately, and customers should be given a paper copy that is annotated in ink and initialed by the clerk.

-- Carbons should be torn into pieces at the cash register before discarding in the wastebasket.

-- Cards should be handed back to the customer, never placed on the counter by a clerk, or displayed so that the number is visible to other shoppers.

--Receipts should be treated as securely as cash.

-- Documents containing credit card information should be shredded before being discarded in trash containers.

-- Applications for store credit cards should ask only for information that is going to be used. If sensitive information, such as a social security number, is required, the applications should be kept under lock and key with restricted access.

-- Credit cards that are inadvertently left behind by a customer, or found somewhere on the business premises, should be placed in a safe or other locked site until the owner can be notified by telephone. (If reasonable attempts to identify and contact the owner fail, a toll-free call to the credit card company can be made.)

The precautions listed are common practices. What is uncommon about the mis that they are not all used every time a customer makes a charge. Consistent application of these precautionary practices will make it very hard for a crook to take advantage of a customer who uses a charge card on your business premises.

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