Just in time for the Black Friday kickoff to the holiday shopping season, USA Today is tackling an increasingly popular topic: debit protections and comparisons with credit.
The most important message in this story:
All Visa cards – including Visa Debit cards – offer security protections that help prevent, detect and resolve fraud, including continuous fraud monitoring and coverage by Visa’s Zero Liability policy, which protects cardholders from unauthorized charges
There several more good takeaways from this story:
- Visa protections exceed those required by U.S. federal regulation
- Technology like text alerts (such as the alerts received by one of the consumers featured in the story) can be a powerful tool to help consumers monitor their account and detect fraud
- Many issuers work directly with their customers to provide provisional credit in less than mandated timeframes – often in a single day.
- PIN debit transactions processed over Visa’s Interlink receive the same protections as a Visa credit transaction.
- It’s important for cardholders to monitor their bank accounts and immediately report any fraudulent activity. Consumers no longer have to wait for a monthly statement, many financial institutions offer free online banking making it easy to track their own purchases – and any that aren’t theirs.
- Consumers should make sure they understand their bank’s policies.
While we’re on the topic of debit benefits, one more tidbit many people don’t realize – a Visa Debit card offers the same dispute protections as a Visa Credit card, so if a product doesn’t arrive from an online retailer or doesn’t meet expectations, cardholders enjoy the same Visa benefit to dispute the charge as when they use their Visa Credit card.
Whether it’s a holiday shopper or a small business owner, people are turning to debit to enjoy convenient, secure access to their ready funds – and the ability to track their spending in a timely manner.
We take great care to provide security benefits and protections whether cardholders choose to use debit or credit so they can select the product that is best for them.
For a complete overview of Visa’s Debit Security, check out the Visa Debit Security Fact Sheet
Posted by: Kate Mulhearn, Visa Corporate Relations on November 24, 2010 at 5:50 pm
