Visa Mandates for Gas Station Chargebacks

Merchants who deal in the necessities of modern life and other traditional commodities may feel less vulnerable to chargebacks than retailers operating in the wild west of ecommerce. Certainly, there are risks that are reduced when you’re selling straightforward products at physical storefronts. However, merchants should always seek to understand the specific chargeback scenarios that affect their type of business. This October, the chargeback liability for non-EMV transactions at gas stations will shift, putting those merchants at increased risk for chargebacks. Are fuel merchants prepared to make the changes necessary to protect themselves from a dramatic spike in chargebacks once this shift occurs?

EMV-enabled card readers are ubiquitous at brick-and-mortar retail establishments these days, and for good reason. The EMV chip helps to prevent the authorization of transactions made with stolen or cloned credit cards, protecting consumers and reducing fraud in card-present environments. Many gas station pumps, however, still use card readers that work by reading the magnetic stripe on the back of the payment card.

The risk of using non-EMV card readers at gas pumps is compounded by the existence of card skimmers. These are small electronic devices that criminals insert into the card reader itself. When a customer swipes their card at the gas pump, the skimmer reads the card information off of the magnetic stripe and stores it for later retrieval. When the fraudster comes back later to pick up the skimmer, they can use the stored payment card data to create “cloned” credit cards or to place card-not-present transactions over the phone or internet.

Full Text:
https://www.chargebackgurus.com/blog/gas-station-chargebacks

©Chargeback Gurus 2020
Production: Courtney Freeman 
Narration: Phil Claffey