Spending alerts on Visa cards to be piloted

Real-time notification alerts on Visa accounts will be piloted under the partnership of Visa and eight North American financial institutions including PNC Bank, SunTrust Bank, U.S. Bank, Wachovia, and Wells Fargo in the United States, and Royal Bank of Canada, TD Bank Financial Group, and Vancity in Canada. The test program will be conducted with up to a total of 2,000 participants.

The project is intended to improve the consumer payment experience by means of alerting cardholders in real-time or near real-time of transaction activity on their Visa account. The alerts will be given through email or Short Message Service (SMS).

The new service which is based on Visa’s state-of-the-art transaction authorization system, and its ability to analyze and conduct risk score transactions “in-flight” will allow cardholders to set limits to initiate a transaction alert. There are 4 alert types that Visa cardholders may choose in the pilot:

• cash withdrawal from an ATM machine;
• a transaction initiated cross border;
• an Internet or telephone transaction;
• a transaction that exceeds an amount that has been chosen by the cardholder.

The benefit of such innovation is that it allows cardholders to verify the transaction details so as to protect their funds form being defrauded. Thus if the transaction appears to be irregular, customers can immediately contact their bank to help stop further transactions on the card. Besides, such a system helps cardholders keep closer track of their transactions and spending levels.