For Immediate Action: Fair and Accurate Credit Card Transaction Act - USA

We would like to bring this to everybody's immediate attention. It concerns a story on a web site called Performink Online. After reading it, you may wish to take corrective action and edit the ticket faces for your venue.

Background

Apparently, Harris Theatre in Chicago (they are NOT a Theatre Manager customer) is being sued because their credit card receipts printed the expiry date and their insurance settled out of court - even though no actual damages occurred to the customer. The article talks about how some lawyers have used this same law to target restaurants and other consumer outlets.

This is a US specific law is called FACTA - the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 (non-authoritative link for more info) which has a subsection repeated below. There does not appear to be a similar Canadian counterpart.

C. Truncation: Credit Cards, Debit Cards, Social Security Numbers

Credit card receipts that include full account numbers and expiration dates are a gold mine for identity thieves. FACTA says credit and debit card receipts may not include more than the last five digits of the card number. Nor may the card's expiration date be printed on the cardholder's receipt. However, this does not apply to receipts for which the sole means of recording a credit or debt card number is by handwriting or by an imprint or copy of the card.

Possible Implications

During Theatre Manager training, we always recommend against printing credit card receipts because we do not feel that the ticket business requires separate receipts - and that the ticket is your receipt. If that is your practice, there are probably few historical ramifications. However, we do recommend following the recommended action below immediately.

Recommended Actions to take

There is enough in my searching of the internet that leads me to believe that this possible threat to your venue is credible (even if it is a sad statement on the legal system). We strongly encourage you to make your own investigation on the matter if you need more information.

Regardless, we suggest that you edit all your 'payment' ticket faces. Look for any lines that have the field called PAY_CARD_EXPIRY and remove that line from the ticket face immediately.

Also, on your web page confirmations, look for the same field and remove that. We will remove from our standard pages and information will be in the next release notes.

Note: Version 8.25 will automatically remove this field from all ticket faces and due to be released early next week. You may wish to have and advanced read of the release notes.