From Fidelity
Fidelity Alert 22A-88
Recent debit card fraud trend
We have seen an increase in fraudulent debit card activity resulting from cardholders being scammed into giving personal information to fraudsters. The most recent fraud trend involves fraudsters calling cardholders and posing as a “Fraud Representative” to gain access to one-time passcodes and other personal information used to load card details into mobile wallets. Below is an outline of how this fraud scheme works:
How the fraud trend works:
- A client receives a phone call from what appears to be a legitimate phone number (sometimes even spoofed as a known call center number)
- The fraudster poses as a legitimate fraud analytics representative
- The fraudster states they either have sent or will be sending the end client a one-time password (OTP) and requests the client to read it back to them
- The fraudster is then able to use the OTP to provision the card number to a mobile wallet
As fraud protection is a main priority for our clients, the below actions are being taken to protect our cardholders:
- Strengthened mobile wallet activation rules
- Additional mobile wallet transaction monitoring decline rules
- Additional daily transaction monitoring controls
- Our debit card call center has been notified of this trend and related patterns
Recommended actions for your firm and debit card users:
We strongly recommend reaching out to your debit card users and enforcing best practices to never share a One Time Pin (OTP), PIN, or passwords to a caller inquiring about their account, as we will never ask end clients for their passcodes, PINs, or passwords over the phone.
TC125774(0322)1