Employee Theft At Point Of Sale

I don't fully understand your situation. Do you mean CVS no longer accepts credit cards, or do you mean the employee said he couldn't handle your card, and I assume you needed to do the card swipe yourself?

Steve, I had to swipe the card myself due to CVS policy. I'm asking if others have experienced this, along with any feedback from those in retail about employee theft at the point of sale.

Derek, I suspect a lot of retailers are instituting policy to discourage an employee from handling the card in order to prevent employee skimming. But most of the focus is on the security of the terminal itself--where compromised card readers are being used to skim the credit card info in plain sight. For example Visa and PCI talk a lot about skimming technology detection in their guidelines but do not explicitly recommend against employees handling cards.

A few years ago there was an explosion of bad-guy skimming technology on the streets--including hand held readers employees can use. While the credit card processors and retailers have responded with many counter measures, they're still most concerned with the safety of the card reader:

This document contains a non-exhaustive list of security guidelines that can help merchants to:

Our customers tend to scrutinize employee behavior based on sales reports (looking for excessive refunds, etc), then review video to spot check employee behavior. I've seen a lot of recommendations that managers make sure employees know they're being watched and their activities scrutinized (like your CVS clerk) to prevent activity like skimming among other employee fraud.

Of course video is also used after the fact to find out when a reader might have been tampered with. I recall a customer not too long ago who was looking for video of the installation of a skimmer on his in-store ATM machine..

Diligence is a key and I think retailers know that. Retailers look at video of their cash registers about 40-50% of the time they look at any video in the store. Obviously this is when the customer interaction happens at many retailers, but it's also where the money is..

I forget sometimes, that the US seems to be significantly behind Canada when it comes to institution "tap" and "chip-and-pin" technologies. Around here, almost everyone now has chip readers, and they simply won't accept a chip-enabled card being swiped. Most stores also have the card reader anchored to the counter on a little swivel stand, placed for the customer to use rather than handing over the card to the cashier.

I asked him if it had anything to do with cashiers taking $5 or so as cash back and people not checking their receipts...

How does the $5 grift work exactly?

What does the Amount Due Readout show? If the cashier says a different amount than what is shown he'll be gone in less than a day. Does he say the right amount but then count back the change wrong?

My favorite example of pos employee grift was years back when the CT turnpike started accepting tokens as well as cash. It was a buck in cash, or you could by 10 tokens for $7.50. It didn't take long for the toll both workers to figure out they should invest a couple hundred bucks in their own tokens, then substitute the tender, thereby pocketing the difference when someone used cash. Legend has it they were given away by the jingling and bulging of the tokens themselves.

Like a poor man's currency arbitrage.

I have seen a portable credit card swipe machine when I was in Canada's restaurant.

When I pay for the bill, I don't have to give my card to cashier, they will bring the machine to you to swipe.

Also in US, I see Chilli's & Red Robin restaurant has a machine where you can pay for the check on your table. That way your credit card don't leave you & have the chance that it might get copy.