Card Recovery Bulletin

A card recovery bulletin is a paper listing of lost, stolen, past-due, over-limit, counterfeit or otherwise problem cards published by credit card companies, like Visa or MasterCard. Merchants will review the list to discover if a credit card seems suspicious or not. 

Nowadays, merchants more frequently access electronic records of problem or illicit credit cards that are updated continuously by the credit card companies rather than rely on card recovery bulletins. Card issuers still publish card recovery bulletins, also known as cancellation bulletins, hot card lists, or restricted card lists, but they are usually used by non-U.S. merchants who either do not have computers or internet access.

Early tools used by card issuers and merchants to detect and prevent credit card fraud included card recovery bulletins. Despite advances in card security, fraud remains a serious issue for card issuers as evidenced by high-profile data breaches of retailers, banks and other companies that maintain credit card and personal identification information on consumers as well as high levels of identity theft. Fraud committed with a credit card present peaked in 2015 with losses of $3.6 billion, but has since declined by nearly half due to the introduction of EMV chip cards.

Card recovery bulletins may be helpful to international merchants when a card looks suspicious or an authorization is declined. The authorization message on a merchant’s point of sale terminal will often include instructions to pick up the card or a request for additional information from the cardholder. If a merchant is presented with a card that is listed on the CRB, the merchant cannot complete the transaction and Visa advises retaining the card if doing so does not present an immediate physical threat to the merchant.

Visa and Mastercard initially developed credit card embossing and micro security features to protect against counterfeits. Visa published its first card recovery bulletin in 1988, which became a catalyst for continuous advances in credit card monitoring and security. The following year, the company created the Visa Issuers’ Clearinghouse Service, a centralized database of approved and fraudulent credit card applications. In 1995, it added the Visa Address Verification Service to allow merchants to confirm a cardholder’s billing address.

Today, Visa, Mastercard and other card issuers rely on digital tools in most markets to detect fraudulent credit cards and activities. These latest tools and technologies include chip cards, tokenization, biometrics, geolocation of payment-enabled mobile devices and encryption.