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Credit card receipt laws forbid retailers from including specific information on transaction receipts. If a retailer violates these laws, consumers may be eligible to recover compensation in a FACTA lawsuit.
What is FACTA?
Under the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA), retailers may not include more than the last five digits of a card number or any portion of a card’s expiration date. If a vendor does not comply with these FACTA credit card receipt laws, consumers may be eligible to recover damages for real or potential breaches of privacy.
Congress passed FACTA in 2003 to combat the rising threat of identity theft and fraud in the United States.
The law includes a number of provisions to help protect individuals against fraud and identity theft. These provisions are especially important as advancing technology makes it easier and easier for thieves to access the personal information of individuals. As receipts are printed readily at almost every transaction people make, and because they are often discarded, receipts are one point at which information can be easily exposed.
Why Was FACTA Enacted?
Before FACTA, vendors and merchants were not limited by credit card receipt laws and regulations, meaning they could print arbitrary numbers of card numbers and expiration dates. This increased the risk of identity theft because a perpetrator could piece together vital information found across a series of receipts.
Now that FACTA has standardized credit card receipt laws, the type of consumer information available from receipts is limited and uniform. FACTA specifically states “no person that accepts credit cards or debit cards for the transaction of business shall print more than the last 5 digits of the card number or the expiration date upon any receipt provided to the cardholder at the point of the sale or transaction.” These credit card receipt laws apply to all receipts printed by registers, self-service kiosks, and at restaurants.
The Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act certainly applies to printed receipts, but discrepancies occur over whether or not the restrictions apply to receipts that are sent to recipients electronically, like by email or text message.
The law’s restrictions do not apply to transactions in which a credit or debit card account number is recorded by hand, or in cases in which an imprint of the card is made as a record of the transaction. This restriction on the information permitted on printed receipts applies to transactions of any amount.
In What Ways Are FACTA Laws Implemented?
FACTA credit card receipt laws are implemented through a process known as truncation which replaces digits and letters in the card number with symbols such as * or #. Truncation symbols replace numbers in a register system and on receipts. However, the process is not always done correctly and may result in accidental violations of credit card receipt rules.
The FACTA regulation states that a merchant may not print any digits of a credit card other than the last five digits. Any of the following examples are violations of FACTA credit card receipt laws:
- 11** **** **** 4444
- **** **22 **** 4444
- **** **** **33 ****
Card number digits are protected because multiple receipts containing different digits of the same card can help a perpetrator piece together full card numbers. A full card number means a perpetrator is more likely to successfully commit fraud.
Expiration dates are protected in a similar way to card numbers. A merchant may not print any part of the expiration date of a credit card or debit card anywhere on a receipt. Any of the following examples are violations of FACTA credit card receipt laws.
- EXP: 03/18
- EXP: 03/2018
- EXP: 032018
- EXP: 0318
- Expires: 0318
- Exp Date: 03/18
- Exp Date: 03/20/18
- EXPIRY: 03/18
- 03/17
- 0317
- Exp Date 03/**
- EXP” **/18
Expiration dates are often used to authenticate online transactions, so they are fully protected under credit card receipt laws. Should a perpetrator have a card’s expiration date, they are more likely to successfully defraud consumers.
Accidental, willful, or negligent violations of FACTA are illegal and carry a steep penalty for merchants and retailers.
Mortgage Compliance Magazine notes that FACTA’s requirements were phased in gradually. Though the law was passed in 2003, the credit and debit card number requirements largely did not go into effect until 2005.
Additionally, the Federal Trade Commission says that merchants with older machines were given until December 1, 2006 to comply with the rules and implement the truncation provision of the law.
Now, merchants who violate the law, whether intentionally or not, face penalties and may be required to pay fines.
Consumers who have had their information printed in violation of credit card receipt laws may qualify for a FACTA lawsuit which could recover damages and could help hold business accountable for violating the law.
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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3 thoughts onCredit Card Receipt Laws Protect Consumer Payment Information From Identity Fraud
I worked as a cashier for a convenience store back in the 90’s, and noticed the customer reciepts that were thrown out by the hundreds daily had credit customer’s full names, cc number, and the card’s expiration date printed on them. The printer was an old dot-matrix printer that used a two-ply carbonless roll for reciepts, with a white paper strip over a yellow pressure sensitive paper underneath, that would keep an impression of every transaction, and would be rolled up inside the point of sale printer, to be collected by management, stored at a warehouse, then discarded en masse every 6 months, with many credit card numbers still valid at that time.
The ease of a thief recovering the cc numbers was shockingly easy, as all of the white copies were just thrown out as trash every shift. All one had to do was dumpster dive, and retrieve a hoard of account numbers with names on the cards, and expiration dates.
I wrote letters to the various CEO’s of the major credit card companies, and was contacted by two of them. I met with the security chief of one of the companies in 1996 at a friend’s legal office dowtown, who brought along a friend and former co-worker, the head of my city’s local Secret Service Office. I was going to have him sign a non-disclosure/non use form, but I was convinced by an itellectual property attorney that shared an office with my friend to just “Give him the information, because he flew hundreds of miles” to meet with me. To this day, I cannot fathom why he said that to me, which prevented me from billing them for my discovery. I was tired from lack of sleep, and I just gave him my discovery and a proposed solution, along with some posts from a usenet newsgroup from a fraudster group, outlining how thieves can procure credit card account information just by dumpster diving at stores for literally thousands of numbers daily, and then how to use said information to buy things over the internet or phone, and have them shipped to a drop address, like a deserted house, for later pickup by the thief.
I set events in motion that day that “Opened a big can of worms,” accoding to another Credit card company’s legal secretary, who asked me if I had been paid anything yet, and when I responded “No,” she said she would “Light a fire under her bosses” to get me compensated. It was amusing how she described the chaos in her company, as “everyone was blaming everyone else” for the breach. It seemed that none of the degreed employees had worked at a convenience store in their lives, and that little old me had helped plug a huge hole in their losses, without so much as an MBA to my credit.
I was the whistleblower, but I didn’t get so much as a “Thank you” from any of the companies I helped. I wonder how much money that Intellectual Property Attorney had cost me with his patently bad advice, and more importantly, WHY he did it.
yes we have been a victim to credit card violations. Please add my husband, Alan and me to the lawsuit.
I have been a victim to FACTA violations against the state of Florida Dept of Revenue and have copies of several years of receipts showing same Please contact me to discuss representation for this matter.