Credit card fraud, ABSA and EasyPay

[McT]

Today my wife got hit for the 2nd time - in 5 months - for a fraudulent transaction on her credit card; both hits come from EasyPay.

She banks with ABSA.

The first time she was hit for R300 and cancelled card. This time it's for an amount of R1,000. Cancelled the card again. Although ABSA refunded the first hit, it takes about 3 to 4 weeks to refund it.

The biggest schlep is the time waiting for a replacement card and time wasted processing the claim through their fraud division. The fraud division only works business hours and it is a mission to get away for 5 minutes. Anyhow, those are the hoops you apparently have to jump to get the refund. So be it.

My question is this, has anyone else experienced similar issues with fraudulent transactions from EasyPay? If so, who do you bank with? I am trying to understand if it's an ABSA thing or not.

Would have though my wife is a low risk, as she has never used her credit card for any online transactions as well as the new card was the chip and pin type.

Thanks in advance.

[Xmnsx]

I work in the credit card division of a certain company and towards the end of last year we saw fraud on a massive scale involving Easypay. Online transactions are not really the issue here, its more of a situation where people are just simply copying the credit card info while they have your card. From the information that we got it seems this is most commonly done by waiters/petrol attendants etc etc, basically any situation where somebody else will have your card in their possession while they go off to swipe it. As far as im aware most banks have placed a limit on the amounts that can be processed on Easypay per day. Unfortunately I'm not aware of what
Absa's policies are in regard to this, but with us this type of transactional fraud has largely ended.

[Totempole]

Consider yourself lucky, my PayPal account was hacked into last year and they took
R11,000 from my ABSA credit card. I was reimbursed within 2-weeks though, (shortly
after PayPal ruled in my favour).

[mikaME]

I have a discovery credit card. Got hit a couple of months ago, 3 easypay transactions of about R15000 total Had the card cancelled immediately. I was refunded thankfully but it took a good few weeks. It was just the wait though, no jumping through hoops.

I cannot understand how this happened though, as I do not ever let te card out of my sight. I do not hand it over to anyone to walk away and swipe it.

[McT]

Thanks for the posts. This helps a bit. EasyPay seems that it is the problem and it seems far to easy to pull this kind of fraud off.

[Xmnsx]

P.S. Don't really place too much faith in the chip and pin system. It's extremely secure for ATM transactions, but the system was designed to be compatible with older card machines/speed points and thus it's still surprisingly easy to push through a transaction without the use of both the chip and pin. Also, watch out for the 'this card machine is not working trick', usually the person handling the machine will walk off to get a new speed point but they will do so with your card. It seems even the most vigilant people fall for this one.

[Jola]

Chip & pin is not used for ATM transactions, the antiquated ATM's in this country only read the magnetic strip, which is easily cloned.

So, to have a level of security you must remove the magnetic strip from your card, which will then still work with all the chip & pin machines of the merchants, and nobody can then clone your card.

But it will not work in an ATM.

I remove the magstrip from the credit card that I generally use, but I keep another for emergencies.

Edit : The above will not help you Against Easypay or online fraud, only card skimming.

[wily me]

Thanks for the posts. This helps a bit. EasyPay seems that it is the problem and it seems far to easy to pull this kind of fraud off.

Why specific with Easypay if they have the credit card info? Is that not maybe because of the convenience using the card details at any supermarket?

I recently started to use VCPay virtual credit card which is linked to an Easypay wallet, that seems secure enough ?

[BBSA]

FNB use Verified by Visa which helps protect your Visa Card against fraudulent online use. It sends a One Time PIN to your Sell which you must enter while doing a online transactions. It is almost impossible to commit online fraud with a FNB Visa Card.

[mikaME]

My discovery card has verified by visa... They still managed to put through the easypay transactions :O

[McT]

So is the solution to block all access to EasyPay? Can I ask a bank to do that?

[chrisc4290]

Had a R 16000 (US$1900) purchase of "Mexican gambling tokens" on PayPal last year. It took PayPal 2 months to refund it but I scored R 88,00 due to exchange rate variations.

[Sepeng]

Yup, got an ABSA card, had R1000 used through EasyPay.
But will give ABSA their due - got the cash back in a day

[McT]

Surely they should block easypay?

[elroc]

Today my wife got hit for the 2nd time - in 5 months - for a fraudulent transaction on her credit card; both hits come from EasyPay.

She banks with ABSA.

The first time she was hit for R300 and cancelled card. This time it's for an amount of R1,000. Cancelled the card again. Although ABSA refunded the first hit, it takes about 3 to 4 weeks to refund it.

The biggest schlep is the time waiting for a replacement card and time wasted processing the claim through their fraud division. The fraud division only works business hours and it is a mission to get away for 5 minutes. Anyhow, those are the hoops you apparently have to jump to get the refund. So be it.

My question is this, has anyone else experienced similar issues with fraudulent transactions from EasyPay? If so, who do you bank with? I am trying to understand if it's an ABSA thing or not.

Would have though my wife is a low risk, as she has never used her credit card for any online transactions as well as the new card was the chip and pin type.

Thanks in advance.

Might be a bit late on this post, but yeah, I also bank with Absa, and got hit by credit card fraud via EasyPay twice in three months, first R4000 then R2000. I'm pretty sure someone inside Absa is leaking CC details.

And today it seems someone else is tryng to phish/fraud me again...Got a suspicious SMS claiming to be from Absa Early Fraud Detection on my credit card, but no suspicious transactions on my Internet statement. Also, the SMS asked me to phone the fraud line number - and I could not verify that number independantly. So for now ignoring it. Add to that, the SMS auto-deleted, I cannot find it on my phone anymore.

So I phoned Absa Fraud line (from the number on their website), they told me to phone card division on a number I am yet again unable to verify independantly.