Safety Precautions to Apply While Using Your Credit(ATM) Card Online and Offline(POS)

Safety comes first in everything, we will share some safety tips as it concerns using your credit card(ATM) online, offline(POS), in-Apps, for shopping, in-app purchases etc, you will learn the signs of unsecured apps and websites, best security practices while shopping online with your credit card or even while using it offline on point of sale(POS) terminals to avert any scam or an unexpected debit alerts, take a chilled water and continued reading.

The world is a global village, gone are the days one will have to travel in other to purchase foreign goods or services, or wait till the day break to be able to buy recharge card from vendors, with the aid of the internet, credit/ debit card, online shopping platforms and e shops, one can easily buy any goods/services online from home or abroad without moving an inch from his/her comfort zone, aided by the internet and our smartphone/PC, one can transact online with ease, but there are side effects and if safety measures are not taking you might loose your hard earned funds to some lazy folks.

As the saying goes, there are bad side to anything good, the internet is one of man’s greatest invention, the same internet has caused many pains, if you are not safety cautious you might loose money just because you spent online with your credit/debit card, I decided to share these safety tips because of the numerous questions I received from members of our blog regarding online money theft and how to stay safe while transacting online, especially as it regards the free earning apps shared here @ androidtechvilla.com that requires credit card details or BVN

First, What is a credit/debit card?

A credit/debit card is the plastic card issued by financial institutions especially banks to their customers for ATM cash withdraw purposes and online transactions, in a lay man’s language, a credit card is an ATM card, the card used to withdraw from an ATM machine, credit cards are mostly linked to users bank account, in fact a Credit card is a bank account at hand, credit cards are issued by different platforms the most popular been MasterCard, Visa, America Express, Verve etc, you can read more about credit card from this Wikipedia page,

To transact online you need the 15 digits on the your credit card, the CVV(the three digit at the back) and the Expiration date(printed on the front), those details should never be exposed to anonymous persons because there can be used to take your money without your consent, though some banks have tried to tighten the security by enabling OTP verification to the users registered mobile phone number or email before an online transactions with a credit card can be successful, however some foreign websites doesn’t require an OTP to complete a transaction with some banks credit cards

This pose a great threat to users who shop online because the credit details are stored on the data base of the website its been used on, on the off chance that the website data got compromised or hacked the user’s credit card information will get exposed and probably misused by some persons, resulting to loose of funds by the unfortunate victims.

Similarly, the use of Point of sale agents popularly known as POS agents to withdraw money from your bank account using Your ATM card has become a norm in our recent society, this is due to the convenience that comes with it, with the aid of the POS agents you don’t have to worry about long ATM withdrawal ques at bank’s ATM machines, since you can get the amount you need within some few minutes utilizing the available POS agents.

On the other hand, some hoodlums disguise as POS agents to steal people’s hard earned money from their bank accounts using their ATM details which are obtain when they used their supposed POS service.

They carry out their fraudulent act by using the customers ATM details to shop online, and sell the product they bought afterwards for cash and since some e- commerce website or banks does not request OTP for this kind of transaction it become very easy for them(the fraudulent POS agents) to achieve this.

continued reading because you will learn how to stay safe transacting online and offline with your credit card at the end of this long article.

Safety Precautions To take While Transacting with (using) Your Credit card(ATM card) Online

1~ Set Aside special Bank account for online and Offline Credit Card Transactions

No matter how secured an online shopping website is, anything can still happen, the first precaution to staying safe transacting online with your credit card(ATM card) is by settings aside a special bank account for online credit card transactions.

This bank account will always have zero account balance, you only credit(send money to) this account from your main bank accounts whenever you want to buy stuffs or pay for some services online, or when you need to use a POS agent service, as soon as the transaction or service is paid for the account balance will return to zero, that way if even the credit card(ATM card) associated with the bank account get into the wrong hands there wouldn’t be any money for them to steal, smart right? 🙂

2~ Don’t input your credit card details on any unsecured website

Before using your credit card on any online shopping site always check if the website is ssl secured(has https, and the locked key sign) before the url, as shown on the screenshot below,

a website with a valid ssl can hardly get hacked, at least not by an amateur, if an online e commerce site is not https secured you should run for your dear money, this is applicable to financial apps, you should check the developers website to ascertain if it’s ssl secure too, read reviews on apps store to ascertain if there is any complaints of credit card debits.

3~ Don’t Expose credit card details on Public places

You should be cautious when using your credit card on public places, most times we tend to expose the details publicly while using them on public transports, airlines etc, you should always hide the credit card details if you must use it on a public place.

4~ Never save Credit card digits and pins on your Mobile phone

Saving credit card details on mobile phone books(Contacts) can save you some time while transacting online since you don’t have to pop out your credit card to input the details, but you are taking a risk doing that, mobile phones can be lost, stolen or attacked by a malicious software, in such an unfortunate event your card details might get into the wrong hands and used against you, avoid the practice of Saving you card details on your phone and stay safe

5~ Always Report lost or stolen credit card to your bank

Don’t ever hesitate to report the event of a lost/stolen credit card to the issuing bank, this way the card will be blocked and can never be used by anyone that might possess it.

That’s all on how you can stay safe transacting online with your credit(ATM) card, we hope you grabbed one or two helpful tip from this article, leave your question or suggestion via the comment box below.

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Best regards..