Credit Card Receipt Rules Under FACTA Protect Card Numbers

On most retail credit and debit card receipts presented to purchasers at a point of sale, most of the card number is omitted or replaced with placeholder characters like asterisks.

They appear like this because credit card receipt rules under the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA) require the full number not appear on any transaction receipt. Credit card receipt rules stipulate under this law that the full credit card number must be truncated to only the last five account numbers.

What is FACTA?

FACTA was signed into federal law under President George W. Bush in December 2003 after being passed by U.S. Congress the previous month. It is an amendment to the Fair Credit Reporting Act. FACTA is an effort to protect consumers from ubiquitous threats of identity theft in the modern world.

Along with the credit card receipt rules demanding credit card number truncation and the elimination of any reference in any way to a credit card expiration date, FACTA set up statutory damages of $100 to $1,000 per incident of violation for enforcement purposes.

The credit card receipt rules and possibility of assessed damages are only one aspect of FACTA that provide identity theft prevention. Another aspect of FACTA is the ability it gives consumers to set up free fraud and active duty alerts on their credit reports.

If a consumer suspects that his personal identifiable information (PII) has been compromised through a data breach of some sort, he or she can set up a fraud alert through one of the three credit bureaus—Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion.

Once a fraud alert is set up with one credit bureau, the alert is required to be automatically communicated from the original bureau to the remaining two agencies and is good for ninety days. An extension of a fraud alert can be requested under this provision as well.

The agency must release this fraud alert with any request for a credit score for a seven-year period. It is also prohibited to include the customer’s information in any third-party distribution list.

Active duty alerts are also a key component of FACTA. This allows for deploying military personnel to communicate to a credit bureau, who will in turn notify the other agencies automatically, of their pending overseas service. Notice of this deployment and service and its anticipated length sets up an alert on the service person’s credit information.

If someone attempts to steal their identity and use their credit score to set up false accounts, the system is alerted that the actual person is not available to be engaged in this activity.

Finally, FACTA initiated what is known as the “Red Flags Rule”—a group of guidelines that banking institutions must set up and follow to ensure the identity security of their patrons.

Among those guidelines are requirements that if an institution receives a change of address on an issued credit card, they need to assess its validity and accuracy using as many methods of communication as possible.

FACTA summarily helps U.S. Citizens manage identity threats through credit card receipt rules, active duty and fraud alerts, and uniformity of rules among banking and financially institutions that issue credit cards.

Free FACTA Class Action Lawsuit Investigation

If you made one or more purchases and the retailer provided you with a receipt that contained more than the last five digits of your credit or debit card number or the expiration date, you may be eligible for a free class action lawsuit investigation and to pursue compensation for these FACTA violations.

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