Velocity Check. This is the fraud control that counts the number of times a card is used within a given period of time (i.e. 24 hours or over 3 days). After x number of purchases the card would fail to approve. It would throw a code instructing the bearer to see the clerk if he/she wanted to purchase further. It might also trigger a phone call from the credit card company’s fraud prevention unit to the card holder seeking to verify that the card was still in their possession and that the purchases were legit. So it wouldn’t necessarily curtail the small time thief from making one or two quick purchases before ditching the card. But it would stop the crooks looking to do more damage than that.

Look, there are bad guys out there with stolen cards who would otherwise fill up the gas tanks of a dozen friends. Also, last year a ring of thieves were arrested in Florida. They hid tanks capable of holding hundreds of gallons in the beds of pickups under tonneau covers. They got caught selling stolen gas for pennies a gallon. Unfortunately, stuff like this goes on all the time.

If you want to avoid having your sale capped at the pump, you can pay with your credit card inside the c-store where you’ll find no limit.

I still don’t understand how it stops fraud. If the theif could run the card once, what’s to stop him from doing it a second time?

Just put up some video cameras at the gas station. And what’s with the pin codes? Am I the only one who doesn’t have the pin code written on the card? The pin code is supposed to be secret…

Are the card companies getting an additional transaction fee for that second portion of the fillup, in addition to the percentage that they take off the entire purchase?

Everybody’s looking to make the credit card companies the bad guys here. I think you’ve seen one too many asinine Oliver Stone movies because your outrage is really misplaced. Yes, banks are for-profit institutions. But we’re talking about real thieves that are stealing billions of dollars from merchants, credit card companies, and consumers every year. Haven’t any of you been the victim of ID theft? It takes money out of your pocket, kills your credit, and impairs your ability to buy a home or car – sometimes for years. This is hardly a case of The Man trying to stick it to the little guy. Grow up!

Industry wide, fraud is up quite significantly year-over-year, so don’t expect these controls to go away. If anything, look for more controls at the pump to go in place. For instance, in many “high risk” market, pumps now require cardholder to enter their home zip code as a pin before authorizing a sale.

If you want to avoid having your sale capped at the pump, you can pay with your credit card inside the c-store where you’ll find no limit.

RSS working fine today, most of yesterday’s posts just showed up, but some from yesterday morning never came through at all. Using Bloglines.

Ah, the credit industry doing all it can to save us from fraud. How about ending all the BS credit card offers and checks that flood the mail. Think of the losses there. Oh wait, those losses are offset by the foolish people who open yet more cards and get buried in more 18% credit card debt. Now, I feel really good that the credit industry is at the ready to combat fraud. Yeah, and my golden retriever makes Hershey bars…

I don’t know if the feed was working earlier (I last checked it about 12 hours ago, I think) but I’ve got the posts in it now.

So Robert, don’t go shopping for shoes after you fill up!

On a larger extent, this is so stupid. Preventing the customer to shop in the USA, that’s like preventing a Swede to pay tax. “Stop there, 10000 SEK is enough tax for YOU this month!”.

Filling up a large car with 76+ liter tank breaks the magic 1000 SEK (167 USD) non limiting barrier at current prices, over 13 SEK per liter. No USA-style stop and go action needed!

You’re right. Effecive security is often a pain, and the enforcement of identity theft laws is much less than perfect.

But one element of security is the enforcement of law. It may not seem to help much in preventing crimes, but if the laws are rigorously enforced, they deter crime. Identity theft is a much less attractive proposition if the chances of getting caught are very high and/or the penalties are stiff.

We need “preventitive” security exactly to the extent that the laws are unenforced.

I somehow doubt that these limits mean anything much, securitywise – consider all the purchases of larger value that go unreviewed.

Be thankful you’re not in some rural areas of the States. The limit there is $35. That will barely satisfy fumes if you wave the pump nozzle around the fill pipe. :)

Should I re-subscribe? Google Reader can handle almost any RSS feed format (Atom, RSS 1, RSS 2, etc.). So strange that it is either not seeing, or choking on your feed.

Also, in many jurisdictions, the enforcement/punishment for crimes like credit card and identity theft is a borderline joke.

I deleted the old feed URL went to the TTAC home page, got a new URL from the RSS 2.0 button, and reset my Google news page.

I received 10 feeds yesterday and two today. That is all there is when I click the RSS 2.0 button.

My point is that I have one of the smallest cars with a not so large tank holding somewhere around a 14 gallons. If I’m starting to get close to the $75 limit, I think they may want to think about raising the $75 limit.

And I was rounding down to $4.50, it’s actually $4.57 this morning at the end of the street. But down the coast in Big Sur it’s pushing $5.25–and I’ll bet the pump still stops at $75.

You’ve hit $75? Filling a MINI? The most I’ve ever fit into my Cooper S was just under 14.5 gallons, and that’s with a 13.5 gal tank (long fill tube?) and after letting the gas light stay on for longer than I probably should have. At $4.50 that’s about $65.

Nope, not just you. Most of the stations in NorCal require this now. Especially the majors like Chevron and Shell.