We are on the edge of the busy summer travel season, and as badly as you want to get away, the scammers want to rip you off.
Michael Jabbara, Global Head of Fraud Services at Visa, said scammers are getting more and more sophisticated by impersonating travel websites.
“They’ll create websites that look very similar to real verified sites, or they’ll set up websites that look like a legitimate hotel,” Jabbara said.
He added that means we all need to be more savvy when booking online, making sure the website we are using is legitimate. Jabbara said we also need to pay attention to some older scams that are still being used.
He said those include “asking for a non-traditional form of payment, if they’re asking for cash or a wire transfer or a transfer through a peer to peer mobile app.”
Fraud costs credit card companies a lot of money, and while Jabbara said it’s a bit of a scary world, Visa is working on the problems.
“The good guys are not standing still, we’ve invested about $10 billion over the last few years in our security capabilities,” he said.
Jabarra advises those who think they’ve been scammed to not wait to contact their bank or credit card company.
