What Is a Card Recovery Bulletin?

A card recovery bulletin is a listing of lost, stolen, delinquent, counterfeit, or otherwise problematic credit cards compiled and pu🌊blished by card networks such as Visa or Mastercard. Merchants can consult the list if a card or card user appears suspicious. Originally on paper, the bulletins have in recent years largely been supplanted by electronic systems.

How Card Recovery Bulletins Work

Card networks publish card recovery bulletins—also known as CRBs, warning bulletins, cancellation bulletins, hot card lists, or restricted card lists—for use by merchants in conducting transactions.

In its guide to banking terms, published in 1989, the American Bankers Association defines a restricted card list as, "A listing of cardholder accounts, in either alphabetical or numerical sequence, on which transactions are restricted and not to be completed by merchants without authorization."

In fact, merchants were urged to confiscate—or "recover"—customers' cards that showed up on the restricted list, as long as doing so didn't put them in immediate physical danger. Similar instructions exist to this day.

Perhaps not surprisingly, that has not always gone well. In 1981, an Illinois congressman reported an incident involving a merchant who had written to him. "When an employee of the merchant informed the customer that she was going to hold his credit card because its number appeared on her bulletin, the customer became upset," the congressman noted. "According to the merchant, 'The customer threw heavy merchandise around the store and hit two customers with marble eggs. The police were called and they wrestled the man to the ground.'"

To the extent that they still exist, card recovery bulletins are now used primarily by non-U.S. merchants that lack computer or internet access for electronic authorization. Otherwise, merchants are more likely to check online lists of illicit or problem credit cards. These lists are updated continuously by credit card companies, making them more current and accurate than the old card recovery bulletins. A card with the sort of problems that card recovery bulletins flag is also likely to be rejected instantly if the merchant puts it through an 澳洲幸运5官方开𒁃奖结果体彩网:electronic point-of-sale (POS) terminal, as part of the normal authentication and 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:authorization process.

Card Recovery Bulletins and Newer Security M🎉easures

Card re🌱covery bulletins are one in a long line of ಌsecurity measures that merchants, card issuers, and processing networks have used in their ongoing efforts to thwart credit card fraud.

In 1980, Visa alone was printing some 1.7 million card recovery bulletins for delivery to merchants every two weeks, though in some regions new bulletins were issued weekly. The bulletins came out in six regional editions.

Visa and Mastercard initially published separate bulletins, but in 1984 agreed to combine them, at the urging of the American Bankers Association. "Since the banks own the credit card organizations, and most banks belong to both, they are in effect paying for duplicated services," The New York Times explained in a September 14, 1984 article on the agreement.

Today, Visa, Mastercard, and other card networks and issuers rely on digital tools in most markets around the world to detect fraudulent credit cards and activity. These tools include 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:chip cards with embedded microchips containing encrypted information on the cardholder and their card, as well as the older (and less secure) 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:magnetic stripes with much the same information. Many cards currently have both microchips and magnetic stripes because not all♏ merchants have upgraded their sales terminals to be able ♎to read the chips.

Cards also have 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:validation codes, three- or four-digit numbers that merchants can use to verify cards in phone and online transactions, where the card itself isn't present. (This can help in instances of identity theft, where the thief has obtained a cardholder's account number but not the physical card with the validatiඣon code printed on it.)

The next major development is likely to be cards with 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:biometric features, allowing for authorization and authenticaꦜtion through facial recognition and finge𓃲rprint scans. These are already being tested in some markets.

Despite all of the efforts to stay one step ahead of the criminal element, credit card fraud remains a serious problem. According to the Nilson Report, which covers the industry, issuers, merchants, and 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:acquirers (the merchants' banks) lost $32.34 billion to credit card fraud worldwide in 2021, with nearly 37% of that occurring in the U.S.

The Bottom Line

Though not as common as they once were, card recovery bulletins were once a major weapon in the arsenal against credit card fraud. Fraud continues to be a costly ☂problem, despite many new digital advances, and both merchants and customers need to be alert to it.