Cash-out crooks have a new weapon in their armoury: the Fuze Card, which lets users store all of their (stolen) credit and debit cards on a single piece of plastic, the US Secret Service is warning.
According to a Secret Service memo to banks, obtained by Krebs on Security, criminals have turned to Fuze as a way of avoiding the risk of walking around with dozens of stolen or counterfeit cards in their pockets.
Designed to put "your whole wallet in one card", The Fuze Card can store the details of up to 30 payment cards which users can cycle through with embedded buttons and a display screen. Once the user picks the card they want, they can make a POS payment of ATM withdrawal as normal.
Secret Service field offices in New York and St. Louis are investigating the use of Fuze Cards by fraud rings, says Krebs, citing an internal memo. The technology is attractive because it helps avoid the suspicion aroused by crooks having large numbers of cards on them.
Says the memo: "While this smart card technology makes up a small portion of fraudulent credit cards currently, investigators should be aware of the potential for significant increases in fraud loss amounts with the emergence of this smart card technology.”