Visa is to require merchants to display only the last four digits of a credit card number on receipts in a bid to combat a rising tide of financial identity crime.
The receipt truncation initiative was announced at a press conference on Capitol Hill with Democratic and Republican senators in attendance. The first phase of the programme will go into effect in July for all new terminals. As well as limiting card number information, the new receipts will also eliminate the card expiration date.
Announcing the plans, Visa USA CEO Carl Pascarella, says: "Receipt truncation is good news for consumers, and bad news for identity thieves. Identity thieves thrive on discarded receipts and documents containing consumers' information such as payment account numbers, addresses, Social Security numbers, and more. Visa's new policy will protect consumers by limiting the information these thieves can access."
Congress has already introduced legislation that would require all credit-card terminals to truncate credit-card numbers to print just the final four digits on receipts within four years. MasterCard has similarly vowed to introduce receipt truncation at merchant terminals by 2005.