CU*Answers Offers Assistance for Compromised Plastics

West Michigan-based CUSO, CU*Answers, recognizes the struggles that credit unions are up against relating to compromised plastics. CU*Answers offers a series of helpful tools and tips, as well as direct assistance to their credit unions when faced with a compromise of ATM/Debit and Credit Cards.

According to CU*Answers, one of the most difficult parts when faced with this situation is matching up the list of compromised cards to the actual member accounts to determine which members have been affected. If provided an electronic list of card numbers, the CUSO will compare it against the credit union’s ATM/Debit or online credit card database and return a report and database file of matching member accounts. This list then can be used with existing CU*BASE tools such as List Generator, Query, or Member Connect for further analysis or communicating with members.

Other helpful suggestions:

  • Push your credit/debit vendor for automated solutions — The first person to ask for help managing this process might actually be your credit card or ATM/Debit vendor. There might be tools and options available that you’re unaware of. A list of 300 compromised card numbers one day might be daunting enough, but imagine if you get a list of 5,000 some day!
  • You should be able to get your compromised card list electronically — Some credit unions have not been aware that an electronic version of the list of compromised card numbers is available from the vendor, rather than a fax. There are resources available on both www.us.visaonline.com and www.mastercardonline.com that might be useful as well. Contact your vendor rep and ask about options to make this process easier to manage.
  • Have you reviewed your Falcon Fraud settings lately? — Just canceling and reissuing a list of cards you get from your vendor obviously isn’t the only thing you should be doing to protect your members. Now might be a good time to review your options for fraud detection to take advantage of the way the networks can monitor and flag potential fraud on the fly, every day.

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