Card security – An interview with Ruben Pereyra and Jose Pedro Ravel

Back

If there was one piece of advice that you’d give members

 to protect their cards, what would it be?

Ruben: monitor your accounts online every single day. And use e-Alerts because now you can set them to meet your own criteria. You can ask the system, for example, to email you for every transaction over $100. There are all sorts of criteria and customization possibilities, which makes these alerts very useful.


Pedro: I would say that with any card; think twice before giving that information out. Think of your phone number. You don’t give your number to just about anyone, do you? No, you are careful with it, because it’s personal. Well, cards are even more important as they are the gateway to your money. And of course, as Ruben says, keep an eye on your account online, and use e-Alerts, they’re great.

Ruben: Speaking of phones, I’d like to add that one thing members should always do is tell us their new phone number and/or address as soon as that information changes. We get it a lot, as does Falcon, that we try to communicate with a member, but we can’t reach them because they never updated their phone number with us. Nowadays changing your account information is easy because you can do it via Online Banking. Please, this is very important; you need to keep your personal information with us updated.


Pedro: The Falcon fraud detection system is great in that it tries to contact you the moment your card activity is strange. Before it would simply block the card, no questions asked. Now it calls you, worldwide; but of course, if your phone number is not current, they won’t find you and then yes, they’ll cancel the card.

Any other advice?

Pedro: Yes. If your wallet’s stolen, or you lose it, or if you see something fishy on your account… don’t wait three or four days to tell us. And if your card’s missing, it isn’t good enough to simply go online to see your transactions and do nothing, thinking that we don’t need to know. You should always call us. Because if you don’t call us and then it turns out there was a problem and you knew the card was missing, you become responsible for the loss of your funds. And with fraud going up constantly, you cannot leave these things to chance or you lose the right to make a claim.

Soon we’ll have a system called CardNav that will allow you to manage your card directly. For instance, if you know that you won’t be using your card for anything the next three days, you can block it during that time. That way if you lose your wallet the card is no good to anyone who finds it. With CardNav you will also be able to use an atlas function, telling the card system where your card will be used, so that anything happening outside your map will be declined. You can also limit or block online transactions. It’s a very useful protection system that will allow you to manage several cards at once, which is handy if you have cards for your kids, for example. You can set specific usage limits for them.


Ruben: Yes, I want to point out to members that our services and accounts are much more affordable than at any bank. Forty-five thousand ATMs in a network where you can take out cash with no surcharge, no bank offers that. A Visa Classic credit card with an interest much lower than the market’s, and a Platinum card that offers you not one but two points for every dollar you spend, always. Who else offers that? Use the services of the Credit Union; they’ve been designed to serve the member, not to make money.


Pedro: Indeed, members should see the Credit Union as the strongest financial institution that they can possibly have; our slogan is Intelligent Ownership, and it really is intelligent to use what we offer, they should check out everything that we put at their disposal, for protecting their money and to make their life easier. We offer everything. Half the frauds that members suffer could have been prevented if they used the tools that are available to them.


Thank you for all this information.

(Ruben Pereyra is Member Services Supervisor at OAS FCU. He describes himself as married, with a doggie. Looks like a biker but likes poetry.

Jose Pedro Ravel is Debit Card Coordinator and an Electronic Transactions Specialist at OAS FCU. Working at the Credit Union for the past 13 years, Pedro is a stout defender of the credit union movement, in his work and elsewhere. For him, a lifetime career of helping people is one of life's greatest dedications.)