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When TV3 presenter Jaquie Brown went to pay for a few "treats" in Los Angeles, the last thing she expected was to have her credit card declined.
She was told her BNZ Global Plus card had been frozen because the bank's security system picked up transactions suggesting credit card skimming. Fully paid-up, she was initially in disbelief.
"Then I thought, 'oh God, what if somebody has skimmed my card and I have nothing left'. Then I was in a bit of a flap. You rely overseas on your credit card for everything."
Skimmers capture credit and debit card information used to withdraw money from cardholders' accounts. They use devices fitted to ATMs, or by dishonest employees in restaurants, shops or bars making a copy of a card.
Skimming happens overseas and here, with cases in Auckland and Northland uncovered last week, prompting a warning from the New Zealand Bankers Association, which said club and societies were contacted by someone keen to provide items of interest and asked to pay a courier by Eftpos when they arrived. The courier's portable Eftpos device was "more than likely" a skimming device.
Brown was further afield, on a work trip to London and LA, and used her card to buy "coffee and sandwiches" and £80 ($200) worth of clothes.
After a long-distance phone call, and "ridiculous" security questions, her card was unfrozen.
Brown said she had no axe to grind with the bank - BNZ had tried to call her, but her phone was dead. "But I think there needs to be more awareness. The banks need to say this is happening, and there needs to be several different methods of contact."
One BNZ staffer suggested the freezing of cards was on the increase, making her think she wasn't the only one facing the same frustration.
"She said this is a huge thing," said Brown. "And she said you just need to let us know if you are going overseas."
The BNZ would not comment on Brown's case but head of fraud and security, Mike Byrne, said only a tiny percentage of credit card transactions conducted every day were fraudulent.
He said the bank had sophisticated technology allowing staff to monitor transactions and spending patterns, and quickly identify unusual activity.
"As a security precaution we may contact the customer, 'freeze' such transactions and, where needed, provide a replacement card for them to use," said Byrne. "The bank keeps a constant watch on fraudulent activity and the effectiveness of the bank's detection technology is such that we have seen an increase in our detection rates."
Director of Massey University's centre for banking studies, David Tripe, is another victim.
He got a call from his bank saying his card was being used in Korea and the US. It had been skimmed in a five-star hotel in Malaysia.
But he did not believe it was common and pointed out that banks, not cardholders, lost out. "Cardholders are risk-protected."
However, ASB's national cards manager, Sean Preston, said more cards were being frozen. "It's not uncommon. The main reasons are when a card has been skimmed or a database of card details has been compromised. It's still only a few hundred a year out of hundreds of thousands of cards."
Preston warned customers to take care in countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, where skimming risks were higher.
Kiwibank spokesman Bruce Thompson did not believe cards were frequently frozen, but said it could happen if suspicious activity was noticed.
Westpac said it had not picked up an increase in skimming and it was a "tiny proportion" of transactions.
