Recently I went to a gas station and used the pump’s automated credit-card payment system. When I finished filling the tank, a receipt was automatically printed for me—right there at the pump.
I reached for my receipt and found another one besides. It seemed somebody had forgotten to take their receipt and found another one besides. It seemed somebody had forgotten to take his receipt. Suddenly, here I was with somebody else’s credit-card number and expiration date. (Not all gas pumps include this information on their receipts, but this was one of the ones that do.) Were I the dishonest sort, I could have tried to place a few orders online or over the phone with this person’s card number.
People give out credit-card numbers over the phone, to clerks in stores and in many unsecured situations. Yet some of these people are afraid to use that same credit card to purchase items on the Internet.
To find out the possible risks involved in using a credit card, I called Citibank and asked about their MasterCard policies. Here is one scenario we discussed. A purchase is made online and the merchandise is never received. What does one do? The credit-card holder calls Citibank and receives a credit for the purchase. Citibank will take up the matter with the merchant who failed to send the merchandise.
Another scenario: Somebody intercepts a credit-card number online and begins making purchases with it. The credit-card holder is not responsible, I was told, for any of the charges made—and Citibank cancels the number of the stolen card and issues a new one.
If one pays by check or cash online, the risks are far greater. If the vendor is fraudulent, the check is cashed or the money received without any easy way of getting the money back.
If a credit-card number is stolen online, at most one is looking at the inconvenience of changing numbers.
So who is really at risk with credit cards on the Internet? Our Cloister Shop at monksofadoration.org/giftshop.html is set up to receive credit-card information using an online secured system. We get the numbers off the Internet and manually enter them into a credit-card terminal to process the payments.
If a credit card is not "swiped," our credit-card terminal asks for the billing zip code of the credit card. If the zip code doesn’t match for the credit card, the terminal informs us. That is why many online merchants are very strict about getting a customer’s credit-card billing address to verify that the credit card belongs to them.
Unfortunately, we have found that a number of people, for many reasons, enter a zip code that doesn’t match the credit-card billing address.
That, coupled with the unlikely possibility of somebody using a stolen credit card to purchase religious goods, made us ignore the warning when a match did not occur.
A few months ago we received an online order from Indonesia for a couple of Bibles. Now, with international orders, zip-code verification doesn’t work at all. We processed the order and sent the Bibles off. Later Global Payments, our merchant credit-card processor, informed us that the card owner never made that purchase. The credit card information had been stolen. Global Payments informed us that we, the merchant, had to absorb the stolen merchandise cost.
So who is really at risk with credit cards? The merchants who accept them.
The bottom line: Don’t be afraid to use your credit card to make purchases over the Internet. Just make sure you know and trust the organization you’re giving your number to, and be sure the transaction is secure (if it isn’t, a box will pop up to warn you). Happy cyber-shopping!
Brother John Raymond, co-
Founder of The Monks of Adoration,
Writes from Englewood, Florida.
MONTHLY WEB PICKS
With this month’s picks we’ll concentrate on marriage.
Marriage Encounter at www.wwme.org is a great way to turn a good marriage into a great marriage. Learn more about encounter weekends and find one going on near you. Information is also available in Spanish.
So you are planning on getting married? Why not look into Catholic Engaged Encounter at www.engagedencounter.org as part of your preparation for such an important commitment?
The Catechism of the Catholic Church has a whole section dedicated to the Sacrament of Matrimony. You can read it online at christusrex.org/www1/CDHN/matri.html#MATRIMONY.
Retrouvaille at www.retrouvaille.org is a program to help couples renew and heal their own marriage relationship. It is a live-in weekend and post-weekend program for married couples. For those thinking of separation or divorce, Retrouvaille (the word means rediscovery) may be the life preserver your marriage needs.
"Love is for Life," a pastoral letter issued on behalf of the Irish Hierarchy in 1985, is very extensive on marriage and even includes a study guide. Read it online at ewtn.com/library/BISHOPS/LOVELIFE.HTM.
For other helpful sites, see www.monksofadoration.org/marriage.html
Brother John Raymond welcomes
e-mail at jr@aplusconsultingnow.com.
He is author of Catholics on the
Internet: 2000-2001,
Webmaster of www.monkofadoration.org