Non-cash transactions have become so common that today people usually find it easier to pay through cards or mobile phone payments. Using debit and credit cards has been popular since the 1980s and more Americans have been using them for their purchases. And with the advent of smart phones, more and more people started using mobile payment applications for various payments such as groceries, restaurants, and others. However, with the growth of electronic modes of payment, frauds and cheating methods such as phishing has increased which has also made some people skeptical towards electronic payments. This article discusses the advantages of FACTA Law and how it can protect consumers.
Cash Payments Still In Vogue
Most of America still prefers to deal in cash since there is no question of ‘identity theft‘ or cheating involved in the transaction. However, many industry pundits are hopeful that with the growth of security technologies, cash may get wiped out completely within a half-century.
How The Miscreants Operate
In the earlier days of the debit card, a lot of information was printed on the payment receipt, which helped miscreants to piece together the important chunks of information and thus get the input information of the credit/debit card owner. This helped them to draw cash or make payments from the victim’s account.
Even today, due to the advent of the dark web, stolen transaction information is used for carrying out transactions in the name of the original owner.
Introducing FACTA Law To Protect Debit Card Users From Frauds
In the year 2003, Congress passed a law called the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act. A provision in FACTA law allowed customers to ask for credit reports per year, which was completely free of costs or any charges. They could do this directly from the major credit card companies only once a year.
The act also helped in decreasing the problems like identity theft issues by creating alerting systems on card uses and by regulating the information that was to be shown on the receipt. As per the FACTA, receipts that are electronically printed are only supposed to show the last 5 digits of the given card.
Also, these receipts are not supposed to show any information related to the expiry date of the card. Therefore, expiration dates are provided special protection since they are pivotal to the authentication process of the card. For complying with these rules, electronically printed receipts are put through a process called truncation. When the information is truncated, important pieces of information are replaced with characters such as # or *.
Rules Set For Payment Receipts
The above-given rules apply to all recipients of electronically printed receipts. This brings under its purview machines such as kiosks, POS machines, processing machines, and other vendors. However, hand-written receipts have different laws.
Although these laws were made to protect the consumer’s credit card and debit card info, the laws are useless if they are not followed by the vendors. For the laws to apply, the vendors have to follow them very strictly by allowing only the required information on the receipts.
FACTA law protects consumers whose information has been taken illegally from their debit card receipts can file for legal action against the vendors who have broken the law.
There was such a lawsuit against Burger King 2018.
In the face of such a case against any vendor, the victim can be awarded anywhere between $100 and $1000 in damages for every violation. Proving a violation of the FACTA law is easy. All the client has to do is to save the receipts and check if the receipt follows the rules of the FACTA law regulations for the card numbers as well as the expiration date.
Have You Ever Been Given The Wrong Receipt Or Defrauded?
Have you ever been to a shopping mall or a restaurant and handed over a receipt that violates the FACTA law? Or even worse, if you suspect whether you have been defrauded as a result of your vendor giving you the wrong copy of the receipt? You can approach your attorney and file a litigation case against them.
Shamis & Gentile, P.A, has been instrumental in helping clients who have been victims of fraud due to wrongful sharing of their information with others. If you too have been in the position, here we are to help you to get you out of the mess.
Previously we have helped a good number of people to overcome such issues of fraud arising from wrongful sharing of their credit card information.
