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Don’t let scammers ruin your account holder’s holiday season. Help protect their financial safety with these seven tips.
‘Tis the season to be jolly — and scammed.
Your cardholders are filling their stockings, dressing their holiday tables, and trimming their trees, which can leave them vulnerable to fraudsters and scammers. With so many transactions filling their bank statement, it can be easy to miss suspicious activity or share one’s credit card information with the wrong person.
One 2023 AARP survey found that 80 percent of U.S. consumers have either experienced or been targeted by some form of fraud that is common during the holidays, including fake requests from charities, online shopping scams, and fraudulent delivery issue communications.
That is why, this holiday season, SWIVEL™ is making a list (and checking it twice) of the ways your financial institution can prevent holiday credit card-related scams.
Common Holiday Credit Card-Related Scams
Before we hop into the ways your financial institution can help prevent credit card-related scams, let’s cover the top scams you and your cardholders will want to keep an eye out for throughout the holiday season. According to the United States Attorney’s Office, some common holiday scams include:
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- Online stores that are either completely fake or made to look like a legitimate store.
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- Fake delivery notification emails or text messages that are meant to look like one missed a delivery or a product they ordered has not been delivered.
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- Gift card scams that deliver empty gift cards.
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- Fake charities looking to take advantage of your cardholder’s generosity.
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- Phishing emails and text messages that contain suspicious links designed to steal consumer’s valuable information.
Ways Your Financial Institution Can Help Prevent Credit Card-Related Scams
Your financial institution plays a huge role in your account holders’ financial health, and it is no secret that protecting them protects your institution. With the holidays presenting a greater risk of scams and fraudulent credit card activities, we have gathered some ways your financial institution can help shield your account holders from credit card-related scams.
Educate Your Account Holders
Educating your account holders about the ways they can protect themselves is crucial to helping them stay financially safe. Providing educational resources, whether through your website, newsletters, or through social media, can help your cardholders stay safe. A few topics and tips you can cover in your institution’s educational resources include:
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- Only using secure sites and avoiding public Wi-Fi
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- Setting up payment alerts
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- Spotting phishing scams
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- Recognizing ATMs and card readers that have been tampered with
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- Online shopping safety and best practices
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- Checking credit reports regularly
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- Signing one’s credit cards
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- Keeping an eye on one’s transactions
Educate Your Employees on How to Spot a Scam
Educating and raising awareness in your employees about scams is another great way of shielding cardholders’ financial safety. Effective education will involve topics like keeping your employees up to date on the latest payment fraud trends, helping them develop a better understanding of spotting red flags, encouraging them to develop a thorough verification routine, and more.
Encourage Strong Password Usage
Encourage account holders to use strong, unique passwords for their banking accounts to further shield their financial safety. From creating unique passwords to updating them regularly, the strength of your cardholders’ passwords is crucial.
Provide 24/7 Customer Support
Holiday scams can occur at any time of the day. Offering robust customer support can be crucial to addressing any concerns account holders have swiftly and effectively — no matter what time it is. A customer support line dedicated to reporting fraudulent activity can enhance your clients’ trust in your financial institution while ensuring timely responses against scammers.
Utilize Fraud Detection Systems
Investing in advanced fraud detection technologies that leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to catch, handle, and escalate fraudulent activity can be an incredibly useful tool for protecting against scammers this holiday season.
The systems analyze cardholders’ transaction patterns in real time, flagging suspicious activities that deviate from usual spending behaviors. Investing in these capabilities can allow institutions to quickly and efficiently prevent fraudulent transactions before they even have the chance to occur.
Offer Real-Time Alerts
Implementing real-time transaction alerts allows your cardholders to take control of their finances, alerting them to every charge that occurs on their account. As they note suspicious activity in their account, they are empowered to report the situation swiftly, allowing your institution to handle the fraudulent activity efficiently.
Invest in Information Security
The security of your account holders’ transactions is a crucial investment for the success of your financial institution. Information security can include:
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- Multi-Factor Authentication: a security measure utilized to confirm user’s identities.
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- One-Time Codes: allow users to securely access their application without worrying about hackers accessing their private information
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- Transaction Verification: a process in which your cardholders are contacted to verify recent transactions that may be flagged as unusual or suspicious
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- Advanced encryption: an encryption algorithm intended to protect sensitive data in financial institutions used to scramble data into an unreadable format, making it useless without the key.
Let SWIVEL Help Make This Holiday Season Brighter
Don’t let these grinches spoil your account holders’ holidays. Through education, risk management, swift responses, and advanced technology protecting your account holder’s transactions, your financial institution can help your clients stay financially safe this season.
We know that monitoring for fraud takes time and expertise, so let SWIVEL help make this holiday season brighter for you and your clients with our robust information security, thorough risk management, and innovative payment technology. Fill out the form below to learn more.
‘Tis the season to be jolly — not scammed.
