There is a professional gang travelling up and down the country with stolen credit cards targeting retailers and particularly forecourt retailers with this recent scam. We are aware that in some instances the gang have photos of credit cards on their mobile phones.
Upon entering your store usually two or three persons will purchase high value products such as alcohol, tobacco, phone chargers and scratch cards. They will ask for a prepaid top up money voucher such as ‘SWIRL CARD’ for a high value usually €300.
They will then proceed to pay with one of the stolen credit cards that they have and they will insist that they enter the card number on your terminal keypad and not use the chip and pin. They will then tell you that you must enter the expiry date if your credit cards are integrated with your EPOS. If they are persistent in the event of the card not going through the first time they will say that they will re-enter the number in case they entered a wrong digit – they will in fact enter a different stolen credit card number as seen on their mobile phone.
We urge all members to NEVER under any circumstance allow anyone to KEY IN a credit card number – please remind your staff NO PIN, NO SERVICE.
You must ONLY ACCEPT CONTACTLESS OR CHIP AND PIN CARDS as a KEYED IN number will not be honoured by your bank irrespective of what evidence you can provide in your defence. If the gang is successful at processing the fraudulent credit card transaction you will not find out until you receive your chargeback letter from your bank, and this could take up to 20 working days to arrive after the incident.