Stay aware of scams
Digital Wallet Pickpockets
While fraud can occur anytime of the year, the holiday season is prime time for card thieves to run wild. Be mindful of a debit and credit card scam that allows a fraudster to trick you into providing information necessary to allow them to load your cards into their digital wallets. Here's how it works:
A fraudster calls members from a spoofed MIDFLORIDA phone number and pretends to be a MIDFLORIDA representative. The fraudster states that they are contacting the member to alert them of a large transaction being authorized through their digital wallet. The fraudster explains that to prevent the transaction from clearing, they will need an authorization code from a text they say the credit union will send while on the phone with the fraudster. In actuality, the code comes via text message from the member’s digital wallet service (ApplePay or SamsungPay). Once the fraudster has the authorization code, this allows them to tokenize the member’s debit and/or credit cards from the member’s digital wallet to use for their own contactless purchases at various retailers.
Be wary phone call, email, text or social media request for information on your digital wallet, debit and/or credit cards, account details or personal identifiable information. MIDFLORIDA will never contact you and ask for you for your personal or account information. If our card processor notices some transactions on your debit or credit card that seem questionable, they will contact you to confirm the transactions are valid. In this instance, you will be given a case number to refer to the incident. If you are not provided a case number, do not accept or return the call and contact the credit union immediately.