STRATEGIC PARTNERS
February 27, 2002
Woodcliff Lake, N.J.-- NYCE Corporation is offering universal participation in Card Alert Services, Inc., a program formed in 1994 to address the growing risk of counterfeit ATM card fraud, to all NYCE Network card-issuing financial institutions in the Midwest.
Under a network rules change, Midwest members became "automatic subscribers" to the CAS service effective Jan. 1. Universal participation in CAS was launched by NYCE in its Northeast service area in April of 1999. With the Midwest roll-out, all of the Network's 2,300 participants are now in CAS.
The goal of the CAS program is to help detect counterfeit ATM card fraud at the beginning of criminal activity, so that affected financial institutions can be notified of card numbers that are suspected to have been compromised and can, in turn, "block and reissue" compromised cards at their option before fraudulent cash withdrawals are made.
"By expanding universal participation in CAS to our Midwest participants, we are again underscoring our commitment to maximize the product value we deliver throughout the NYCE geography," said Susan A. Zawodniak, vice president with NYCE Corporation and executive director of the NYCE Network.
As part of its fraud detection services, CAS receives a subset of switch transactions from NYCE and other participating shared networks.
The transactions are filtered through software programs developed by CAS to help identify suspicious transactions. In the usual CAS process, the issuing participant is notified of suspect transactions and asked to verify them and respond to CAS. If it is decided that transactions are being conducted with counterfeit cards, CAS attempts to determine when and where the compromise occurred, identifies card numbers that were likely involved, and sends a list of suspected compromised card numbers to the affected financial institutions.
In addition to the benefits afforded by the early detection of counterfeit cards, NYCE issuing participants will also receive "Alert Bulletins" from CAS on recent frauds and scams, and periodic "Peer Reports" so that card issuers can compare their fraud experiences with those of other similarly-sized financial institutions.
Headquartered in Arlington, Va., CAS receives and analyzes millions of transactions a day accounting for approximately 70 percent of all switch volume in the U.S. With eight participating regional EFT networks, over 9,000 financial institutions in 40 states now receive the CAS service. NYCE is one of five EFT networks with an ownership position in CAS.
