Ultranomad wrote:
I use wise.com (formerly Transferwise). Totally happy with it.
Same for me.
I stopped using other credit/debit cards for international travel due to the per-transaction currency conversion charge as well as the terrible conversion rates. I keep several of my most-used currencies in Wise and top them up when the rate is favourable. If the currency needed when using the card is depleted then they take the remainder of the transaction from one of the others, converting at the current mid-rate. Their conversion charges have gone up a bit but they are still the best deal in town as far as I have seen.
Regarding fraud, they have 3D Secure with 2FA via app. I have the app installed on several devices, so if one is lost I’m still not blocked. SMS for card authentication is a no-go for me. I keep another card just for eventualities. But I’ve never needed to use it.
I’ve encountered the odd issue trying to retrieve cash from an ATM, but that has always been due to the national system or ATM device. Trying another ATM machine has always then worked.
The problem is that with modern fraud there is usually something extra that’s happened, to “assist” the target to make the “right” decision. They are getting very clever, psychologically.
Peter wrote:
The problem is that with modern fraud there is usually something extra that’s happened, to “assist” the target to make the “right” decision. They are getting very clever, psychologically.
Sure. It will never be possible to securely take the human out of the loop. There are many scams using technology, with new ones appearing every month. Humans still need to be aware when they are spending their money and when not (i.e. subject to fleecing attempts).
I stopped using other credit/debit cards for international travel due to the per-transaction currency conversion charge as well as the terrible conversion rates. I keep several of my most-used currencies in Wise and top them up when the rate is favourable. If the currency needed when using the card is depleted then they take the remainder of the transaction from one of the others, converting at the current mid-rate.
That’s what absolutely all people, who I know and who travel a lot to countries with different currencies, do using Revolut or any similar card. Being a bank, Revolut has several other advantages allowing not only free transfers between users but also cheap SEPA payments, topping up using account transactions (not card only) and other functionalities not related to traveling and usual card usage. Also, you can create and use virtual cards for one-off payments if you don’t want to expose your actual card to potentially unsafe environment.
The LAA got bilked out of a lot of money recently by one of these “your account is being defrauded, you need to transfer the money to a new account” type scams. Apparently the social engineering was done well – the scammers knew enough details of the people involved, the staff member who was the victim was completely fooled until it was far too late.
Once they realised it was a scam, they informed the bank – one of the transactions still hadn’t gone through…then the bank let that transfer go through several hours later, anyway, even though they had been notified it was fraudulent! (NatWest).
This is well off topic for CC fraud but the more clever scams tend to involve bank transfers, usually big ones, coupled with access to the email account of one or both parties which enables the scammer to obtain convincting contextual information. With an “inside job” like that, it becomes easy to fool people, and it takes seriously good staff training, paranoid staff, and avoidance of modern email apps (ones which render HTML emails) to prevent this.
The only way I could have detected the one I got was by a) noticing that the real vendor was using plain+html emails while the scammer was using html-only emails (the latter is a truly dumb idea for business usage, and really crap for security, but is becoming common) and b) by examining the email headers (which almost nobody does, or even knows how to do). The chinese vendor (whose email account was penetrated) just typically arrogantly told us to send the money again, which we had to.
The other day I spoke to a guy who has done extensive travel in China, with business activities, and he said the culture is basically a “low trust” culture, and scamming somebody is regarded as socially ok. It is like I was once told by an (IIRC) Egyptian that stealing from anybody is fine because if you got away with it, the victim was stupid and deserved it.
I know very little about the LAA specifically but somehow it doesn’t surprise me they got scammed successfully. Too many part-time people…
As I posted a while ago, the Revolut scam on my Halifax CC account was done without me using my CC at all, or doing anything whatever. Somebody found out a way to add a Revolut card on the Halifax account and then use the Revolut card for large cash transactions. I know no more…
Had a funny one today in Italy.
The bloody useless POS called the Halifax Clarity (the one with the good exchange rate) is now permanently blocked via contactless use in my phone, but it works contactless physically (for small amounts), and works in a card reader with a PIN. It has however been blocked for amounts like €200 regardless of presentation – started when I tried to pay for a ski pass.
Of course the morons called Halifax have a tens of minutes’ long chimp script phone queue 
Another card also got blocked for a whole day after I tried to buy the ski pass with it, but seems to work now.
“The LAA got bilked out of a lot of money recently by one of these “your account is being defrauded, you need to transfer the money to a new account” type scams.”
On 3 January, when the LAA office reopened after the holiday, an email was sent to all members raising charges from 1 January.
Not a big rise, but surprisingly sudden, and without warning
PS. I thought the staff were employees, not volunteers. Rise is said to be due to wage increases.
Cost of fraud is always passed on to customers
Cost of fraud is always passed on to customers
But it’s easier when it’s distributed
