As the GPR (general-purpose-reloadable) card category has grown in products offered and dollars loaded, it has attracted the attention of criminals who see it as a relatively easy way to steal money. It’s a big enough issue that some retailers have abandoned certain GPR products or avoided the entire category.
And some providers have had to retire products that proved magnets for “fraudsters,” in particular PIN-based cards, which are more susceptible to phone scams and victim-assisted fraud. Last year, Green Dot discontinued its MoneyPak card because of such issues.
Click here to read about how millennials are embracing prepaid debit cards.
Internally, GPR card providers are constantly tracking and crunching transaction data to determine which products, retailers and stores are being hit most frequently. For example, NetSpend monitors metrics such as the number of sales, reloads and time between a reload and card purchase.
American Express has its own granular, merchant-level detail, in terms of how cards are being spent and used in stores and also how they’re being sold.
And there are basic steps retailers can take to shield themselves at the time of the transaction. For example, never accept credit cards for a prepaid-card purchase, says Angela Williams, senior director of retail client management for Green Dot Corp. “Put prompts in your POS system that flash up: ‘Do not sell this card over the phone.’ It’s really constant training,” she says.
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