Digital payments: 2.9 million Italians scammed on electronic cards. The rules on holiday

The summer months are the ones most at risk for fraud: last year around 2.9 million Italians suffered a scam or attempted fraud linked to their electronic payment card, according to a survey commissioned by Facile.it from mUp Research. To help defend itself, Facile.it has created the vademecum of 10 golden rules to avoid nasty surprises.

Before departure, check directly with your bank whether, when travelling abroad, the card you are taking with you is accepted in the country you plan to visit. The same applies to contactless payments via smartphones and wearable devices, an increasingly popular alternative. The third golden rule is to review the pin codes of your cards before you leave and update your home banking apps, remembering to memorise the information and never leave the codes with the cards. To avoid nasty surprises before leaving, you should also check whether only credit cards are accepted for the services you intend to pay for, such as car rental, and not debit or prepaid cards.

Another rule so as not to have any surprises on your return from holiday is to check the conditions applied for the use of credit or debit cards by your bank, both the commissions and any surcharges applied in the case of operations carried out in a currency other than the euro, if you go abroad. Also when choosing which card to use, the advice is to pay attention to daily, weekly and monthly spending limits, bearing in mind that, normally, debit and prepaid cards may have lower limits. And, in general, in a non-Euro country paying with cards it is better to choose the local currency for transactions, avoiding onerous exchange charges.

If the card is lost or stolen, or if suspicious amounts are charged, the bank should be contacted immediately and the card blocked, or the bank may not reimburse. Equally important, therefore, remember to activate app notifications or alerts that warn you in real time when the card is used. Finally, remember to monitor spending also in the months following the return, when it may happen that costs are charged illegitimately, regardless of whether it is an attempt at fraud or a simple mistake.