Introduction
Card recovery bulletins are documents that list the stolen, lost, over-limit, past-due, counterfeit, and cards with some problem as declared by the credit card companies, such as a MasterCard and Visa. Merchants and vendors may make use of this list to ensure that the card produced by a customer is not the one which is in the list of suspicious cards.
Understanding the Card Recovery Bulletin
Today, the merchants and vendors can access electronic records that are continually updated by the credit card companies specifying the details of illicit cards. They don’t have to depend solely on the card recovery bulletins to discover problematic cards.
However, the credit card companies still circulate the card recovery bulletins and are mostly used by merchants that are not having access to the internet and are still used to doing their business in the old fashion.
Credit card bulletins are the very first tools used by merchants and credit card companies to prevent credit card frauds. In spite of advancement in technology, preventing credit card frauds is still challenging as the fraudsters are managing to find new ways to breach the security. This has given the merchants and credit card companies sleepless nights.
The year 2015 saw the highest level of credit card frauds as the losses touched a whopping USD 3.6 billion. Realising the loophole in the system, credit card companies launched credit cards powered by EMV chips and the losses have now plummeted to almost half.
Importance of Card Recovery Bulletin
A card recovery bulletin can be useful for international merchants when a card presented by an individual seems dubious or when a transaction is declined or not authorised. When this happens, the merchant may request the individual who presented the card at the point of sale to provide additional information for verification purpose or refuse to go forward with their trade.
A merchant cannot complete the transaction if he or she presents a card that is enlisted on the card recovery bulletin, and merchants are supposed to retain the card if there is no threat to them.
