Fiserv call center reactivated stolen cards, lawsuit alleges

A new lawsuit against payment processor Fiserv highlights a critical vulnerability in the consumer financing ecosystem: social engineering at the call center level. FiCare Federal Credit Union alleges that Fiserv employees reactivated stolen credit cards after scammers successfully bypassed security questions using stolen personal data. For retailers and operators, this is a wake-up call regarding the 'human element' of fraud. Even if your digital POS systems are secure, the manual override processes used by lenders and processors can be exploited. The lawsuit claims that scammers used stolen Social Security numbers and addresses to pass identity verification. Once they convinced call center agents to lift fraud blocks, they went on spending sprees. At least five other financial institutions have reported similar patterns. This suggests that the protocols meant to protect your customers and your store’s transaction integrity may have systemic gaps. When these blocks are lifted erroneously, it leads to increased chargebacks and administrative headaches for merchants who processed the fraudulent sales in good faith. You should be aware that 'verified' customers may still be fraudulent if your processing partner has weak verbal authentication standards.

Source: American Banker — Top News

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