Black Friday is filled with numerous scams every year, but how can we avoid them? Here are some tips from Revolut.
The 2020 Black Friday will be predominantly online because of the Covid-19 restrictions that will force many shops worldwide to stay closed and many people not to leave their homes.
This means that many of the offers available at this event will be online and it will be necessary to use credit or debit cards to make purchases. Many people who have approached e-commerce for the first time in their lives during this year of lockdown could easily run into scams.
In fact, the ECB has reported that fraudulent transactions now amount to around €1.8 billion every year and several studies indicate that online credit and debit card scams are on the rise.
Revolut’s tips for avoiding Black Friday scams
For this reason, Revolut – one of the most famous fintech apps on the market – has created a list of useful tips to increase security when shopping online:
- Visit the seller’s website directly. During periods of intense shopping, fraudsters create copies of the retailers’ websites, which are very similar to the original ones. They then post offers on social media or send the link via email or message, pretending to be the legitimate seller. If the offer is too good to be true, it probably isn’t! So if you’ve heard of an unmissable Black Friday or Cyber Monday deal, visit the reseller’s website directly instead of browsing search engines or clicking on ads and links found on social media.
- Use disposable cards whenever possible, especially if you’re not sure which site you’re buying from. These cards can only be used for online payments once, before being destroyed and the number replaced. It will therefore be impossible for fraudsters to access the money even if they come into possession of your card details.
- Enable push notifications for every purchase and action made with your financial service or bank account. This makes it possible to detect possible fraud in real-time and report it immediately in order to receive a refund of the payment quickly.
- Connect all your accounts together with Open Banking, so you can see all transactions in one place and have full control over your expenses at all times, without the need to open every single account or risk missing a fraudulent transaction. This is especially recommended for people who use different cards linked to different accounts for their online purchases.
- Use your card with Apple Pay or Google Pay to provide additional security. When making a purchase using one of these methods, the merchant receives a unique encrypted code instead of the card number. This happens for both online and physical transactions, so you can also use it in shops to pay with a smartphone without a digital PIN, removing the risk of someone seeing it.
