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Just out of curiosity, what is the actual penalty to American Express for saying their page is secure while transmitting credit card numbers in plaintext?
by jeff18 16y ago
Just out of curiosity, what is the actual penalty to American Express for saying their page is secure while transmitting credit card numbers in plaintext?
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- eli 16y agoIf someone steals my card number, they're the ones on the hook. Edit: mkull is probably right in the vast majority of cases
- mkull 16y agowrong.. if someone steals the card number, the merchant who accepts the fraudulent transaction is on the hook. Not AMEX
- xenophanes 16y agoThat sounds awful. Credit card fraud is mostly paid for by merchants??
- jacquesm 16y agoThe card issuer has two parties they can stick the charge to, one is the merchant, the other their customer. The merchant is the easy way out, they're not going to cancel their connection with the card issuer because that's their bottom line. Sticking the charge to the customer is harder because the customer will cancel. Follow the path of the least resistance: stick it to the merchant. Now if they did the right thing, they'd fix their acceptance rules and a bunch of security issues and eat the remainder of the charges. Fat chance of that happening any day soon.
- btilly 16y agoIn the USA, by law, they are not allowed to stick it to the customer for more than $50. If they ate the charges, they are afraid that a lot of merchants would deliberately ring up fraudulent purchases for the guaranteed profit. Those two facts force them to the current system. And the fact that merchants are not allowed to charge customers different rates for different cards gets rid of incentives for merchants to charge customers for the poor security practice that the credit cards have.
- tptacek 16y agoThere clearly are merchants who do that today. Last time we have a card stolen, we got tons of random bullshit merchandise in the mail (weird cosmetics and such), presumably for the affiliate money.
- jacquesm 16y agoYou are clearly arguing from the perspective of a 'good' consumer. But think about it for a second, those charges were inflicted on good merchants, the affiliates are not the merchants, they're in the same boat that you are in, except they lost their goods, the affiliate pay-out and a chargeback fine on top of that.
- hugh3 16y agoThis is actually sensible, since it shifts the responsibility for verifying the customer's identity onto the merchant, and lets merchants figure out exactly how much trouble they want to go to in order to do this. Some places will demand a photo ID to go along with your credit card transaction. On the other hand, some places like Starbucks don't even make you sign the receipt -- they figure the small number of coffees which get charged to stolen credit cards are well worth the ability to keep the line moving.
- ptomato 16y agoPer the merchant agreements, they cannot deny you the sale if you don't want to show your ID. Also, the credit card companies no longer require signatures for purchases under $20 (possibly $25?) which is why Starbucks doesn't require you to sign any more.
- ktsmith 16y agoYup, merchants don't just end up paying for the actual credit card fraud via chargebacks, they often lose tons of money on fraudulent chargebacks. In those cases the merchant will win the dispute and get the money they were owed, but will be out various non refundable fees ($20 per instance with the last dozen accounts I've worked with).
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]