Understanding the Difference Between a Travel Notice and a PAN Exclusion

Article Contributor / Dan Ferrel / Client Learning Consultant II

With summer travel season in full swing, it’s important to understand what options are available to ensure your cardholders have access to their funds without compromising protection against fraud.

Travel notices and PAN exclusions are two cardholder-level settings you can use as you walk the fine line between convenience and fraud protection. Let’s take a closer look at each option.

What’s a Travel Notice?

A travel notice is a cardholder setting that can be applied in SHAZAM^® Access to notify SHAZAM that you have a traveling cardholder. Using this feature, you can establish the time frame your cardholder will be traveling as well as where they’re traveling to. All international and domestic locations are available when applying a travel notice.

Why Apply a Travel Notice?

With SHAZAM’s real-time fraud monitoring system, all transactions are analyzed to determine the probability a transaction is fraudulent based on the transaction criteria. A component of that analysis is the geographic location of the transaction, meaning travel can impact the fraud score. If the fraud score reaches a certain level, the card may be placed in a temporary block status.

By providing SHAZAM your cardholder’s travel information, it allows us to take that travel situation into consideration before we temporarily shut the card down if fraud is suspected and we’re unable to reach your cardholder.

By establishing a travel notice, you help us make a more informed decision on whether to apply the block, meaning less impact to your cardholder’s ability to use their card when traveling.

What’s a PAN Exclusion?

PAN exclusion is a SHAZAM Card Block feature that allows you to exclude cardholders from any BIN blocks you have in place. BIN blocks apply to all cardholders who have a card starting with a specific BIN, which restricts them from using their card based on the block criteria that was set at the BIN level. Through SHAZAM Access, either in the Cards or BINs tab, you can exclude a cardholder from that block temporarily.

Why Apply a PAN Block?

It’s very common for financial institutions to establish BIN blocks based on state or country code. For example, we see a lot of blocks associated with international country codes, even to the extent of blocking all international transactions. However, if a cardholder is traveling internationally, they won’t be able to use their card outside the U.S. unless you add a PAN exclusion for that cardholder. The PAN exclusion option gives you the power to respond to cardholder requests quickly and easily without contacting SHAZAM when cardholders are traveling.

Choosing the Best Option

When a cardholder is traveling, both a travel notice and PAN exclusion are options to consider. A PAN exclusion is only needed if you have a BIN block in place. Without the PAN exclusion, a cardholder won’t be able to use their card while traveling. Alternatively, a travel notice doesn’t impact a BIN block. Travel notices simply provide SHAZAM information to help make cardholder travel hassle-free, without sacrificing their fraud protection.

Additional Resources

More information about initiating a PAN exclusion or adding a travel notice can be found in SHAZAM Resource or the Help Center on SHAZAM Access.

And don’t forget about our short fraud management training videos located on SHAZAM Access in the Fraud Watch tab.