Truncation

Have you noticed that stores and restaurants only include the last four or five digits of your credit card number on your receipts? This can be annoying when you go to return something and have to figure out which credit card you used, but with all the hacking, dumpster diving and general theft going around, it’s for our own protection.

Truncation is an actual rule made by the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA) that came into effect in 2006. Any business that takes credit cards is required to print no more than the last five digits on a receipt. Otherwise if thieves got their hands on your receipt that you carelessly tossed in a wastebasket, they would have all they need to make a fake credit card or sell the number on the Internet. The rule doesn’t apply to handwritten receipts or those produced from those little sliding imprinting devices that you never see around anymore. Now if they would only stop hackers from breaking into the big box stores’ customer data, the world would be a better place.