This morning I woke up to see a fraud alert from our US bank. We live in England and the alert was for 2 charges to our bank account using our debit card in a Safeway grocery store in Arizona. The charges were $50 and $4.58. I called the bank to confirm that it was not us and to cancel the card.
This was unexpected because we haven't been in the USA since September 2017 and we have only ever used that debit card to withdraw money from ATMs when visiting the USA. Talking with the agent she said the transactions were made using a contactless card. I also confirmed with her that we have no automated charges associated with the card. The only automated charges on that bank account is a direct debit to a charity, and that has been in place for years.
I have no idea how the fraudsters could possibly have found the numbers on that card to have created a contactless debit card. If I had used an ATM with a scanner or camera in September 2017 then the thieves have taken a long time to duplicate the card.
We also have US credit cards on that bank account and when I first saw the alert this morning it was the credit card account I looked at first, never even thought that it was the debit card.
This was unexpected because we haven't been in the USA since September 2017 and we have only ever used that debit card to withdraw money from ATMs when visiting the USA. Talking with the agent she said the transactions were made using a contactless card. I also confirmed with her that we have no automated charges associated with the card. The only automated charges on that bank account is a direct debit to a charity, and that has been in place for years.
I have no idea how the fraudsters could possibly have found the numbers on that card to have created a contactless debit card. If I had used an ATM with a scanner or camera in September 2017 then the thieves have taken a long time to duplicate the card.
We also have US credit cards on that bank account and when I first saw the alert this morning it was the credit card account I looked at first, never even thought that it was the debit card.