We have come across people being charged on their cards by someone out of San Fransico CA. The charge information says our store name followed by San Fransico CA. We are not based from there and I am having a hard time piecing together why this is happening. They have not used the same way to pay or checkout. Has anyone else had customers contact ya’ll about this issue? Have you been able to figure out how they are posing as your store? I am at a loss for this. Any insight would be helpful.
I am sorry to hear that this has happened to your business. This is a common practice by malicious third parties to redirect people affected by their scam to innocent businesses. Their hope is that the innocent business will “refund” or assist the customer to a resolution even though the charge didn’t come from their actual store.
Payment descriptors that show on charge statements can be customized from within a payment gateway settings. In this situation the customer’s credit card or banking information has been compromised and a charge has been processed using a gateway setup with that billing descriptor.
The best thing to do in this situation is to let affected customers know that this is a scam, not related to your business in any way, and their next best step is to contact their bank and secure their online accounts as their banking details may have been compromised by a third party.
Once enough affected people submit chargebacks through their bank for these fraudulent charges the gateway processing these payments will stop all further transactions.
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