Tips to Protect Your Credit Card from Fraud

Card fraud as we discussed earlier is one of the Worst threat to the people not only in India but most of the people all around the World. Here is the video which I hope will give you some idea of ways you should follow to protect yourself from fraudsters.

There are so many ways for the fraudsters to get the details of your account information unless otherwise you take some precautionary measures. Here are the tips for you


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Know how Skimming occurs

This video though did not give you a clear picture of the process of Skimming, will help you to know the time taken to skim a card and the ease with which one can misuse your card if you are not a little bit aware.



Hope you get some Idea when you see this atrocious simplicity of the process involved in getting the details of Credit card.

Drawbacks of Card Protection Plan

Card protection plan may sound good if you listen to it without inner intuition but if you sit down a while and think about the benefits it offers, your comment about the plan will be 'Absurd'. Let us discuss the drawbacks,

Ease of contact
A report about the card loss to a single number (CPP customer service) may sound good but when you think about the possibility of carrying more than two cards with you at a time, you will say that it is a rare incident because no sensible person will be carrying more than two cards with him when he goes out. So even if he loose the card he will be calling just two banks to report the card loss and this is not a tedious process. Still if you insist about carrying more than two cards then you can be sure that the Third card if lost will not get the full compensation if your all three cards had been misused each up to forty thousand. So carrying more than two cards is dangerous even if you are a member of Card protection plan. Thus this 'single point contact' benefit becomes invalid.

Compensation For Fraud:
The real benefit of the card protection plan is the 'Pre-notification benefit' that is the compensation for fraudulent transaction if any that happens before the report of card loss to the CPP but again if your card loss is more than two or your credit limit is more than Forty thousand then this plan wont work for you since the total coverage is up to One lac rupees and the maximum amount a card can fetch as compensation is Forty thousand rupees only. Here again the fraudulent transactions without involving PIN (Personal Identification Number) number alone is covered. This means online card fraud, Debit card fraud (ATM fraud) will not be covered.

In post notification online fraudulent transactions is covered but what is the point? Once the card holder reports the card loss the card holder is not liable for the fraudulent transactions whatever it may be. This is what the bank assures and this compensation up to Twenty lac rupees after the report of card loss is just an EYE WASH.

Assistances:
Hotel assistance, Travel ticket assistance and Emergency Cash assistance is just another way to lure the people because instead of calling CPP and waiting for an unknown executive from 2 to 24 hours one can straight away go to the bank and fill the cash withdrawal slip and get enough cash to proceed further instead of getting assistance and paying it back after the card loss. The other benefits like helping to get a new card are again just 'Eye Wash'. Once again these hotel, travel ticket assistance may not be given to you in full as stated and it is subject to 'status' and this term 'status' itself has more than enough meaning in it. The discussion of the drawbacks of the card protection plan is a brain work of the authors and if the readers find any faults in the explanations your suggestions are welcome.

Services offered by CPP

CPP assistance private limited is a UK based multinational company that has tie up with number of Banks all over the world and it announced its presence to the world by 1980. The CPP Group Plc was founded 30 years ago by Hamish Ogston who is the company's owner and Non-Executive Chairman. The first service offered by CPP group Plc is the Card Protection plan and now they are offering a wide variety of services.

The Assistances provided by CPP is same as that we discussed above but depending on your location and your Bank this may vary. The general benefits of the Card Protection plan is as follows,

Fraud Protection
After the loss of card (credit or debit cards) if any fraudulent transaction happens that will be compensated by CPP. The coverage will be upto Five thousand Euros cash if any fraudulent transaction happens before the report of card holder about the card loss. For the fraudulent transactions after the report of card loss by card holder the coverage is upto One hundred thousand Euros.

Emergency Cash Assistance
If you are travelling or out of station and lost your card means CPP helps you with Three Thousand Euro cash as advance and this assistance provided is subject to status and is repayable within 28 days of time.

Apart from the above benefits the other benefits include 'Single point contact' for blocking all the cards that have been lost and these benefits can be extended to family member provided they reside in same mailing address.

After the blocking of cards CPP itself helps to get new cards and thus one need not to worry about getting new cards from their bank.

Card Protection Plan

The card protection plan has yet another scheme called CLASSIC PLAN which helps to protect all your Credit cards, Debit cards and there are differences between Premium plan and Classic plan. Obviously the difference is the Annual Charges which here is One Thousand Four Hundred and Four rupees and this includes (cpp membership fee of 995+ processing fee of 99+ service tax of 10) all the possible charges and one can be sure that there will not be any additional charges.

Again here the protection is for all your credit cards, Debit cards and the details of the plan is as below

Fraud protection
Here for the fraudulent transactions that happens before the report of the card holder is covered up to a maximum of 50,000 rupees and the maximum amount a card will be paid as compensation is 20,000 rupees. For the fraudulent transactions if any after the report of card holder about the card loss is covered up to a maximum of Fifteen lac rupees. This fraud protection starts seven days before the card holder's report of card loss and extends to any period after the report.

Hotel, Travel Ticket replacement Assistance
After the card loss if the card holder is traveling or out of station, he, if needed can get Eighty thousand rupees as hotel assistance if he is abroad and Forty thousand rupees if he is in India. The card holder can also get Travel ticket replacement assistance up to a maximum of Eighty thousand rupees if he is in abroad at the time of card loss and if he is in India he can get up to Forty thousand rupees as travel ticket replacement assistance. These assistance can can be paid back in 28 days of time without interest.

Unlike premium plan there is no emergency cash assistance offered and again this benefit offers protection where ever the card holder is in the world at the time of card loss. Though the plan seems beneficial an inner intuition will tell you that there are lot of drawbacks and the discussion of the drawbacks is postponed to upcoming discussions.