Understanding The SHAZAM Security/Fraud Activity Report (SCD020)

Article contributor: Dan Ferrel / Client Learning Consultant

Fraud is one of the largest threats to the profitability of your debit card program. SHAZAM offers a wide array of products, services and reports to help you manage your risk. Utilizing all available SHAZAM fraud prevention tools is essential to protecting your financial institution and your cardholders against fraud.

One of the key daily fraud reports SHAZAM creates and makes available to your financial institution is the SHAZAM Security/Fraud Activity (SCD020) report. The SCD020 report gives you an effective way to monitor transactions that have been identified as being high-risk.

Report Overview

The SCD020 report lists your cardholders’ transactions when triggered by specific criteria intended to identify high-risk card use. High-risk card use is determined by transaction categories and sub-categories combined with threshold values, which could be the default thresholds established by SHAZAM or thresholds that have been customized by you. Because the thresholds are customizable, you can tailor the report to better meet the needs of your financial institution.

Categories, Sub-Categories and Thresholds

The SCD020 is made up of several transaction categories and sub-categories. These categories are then tied to threshold values that work together to trigger what is provided to you on the report. Some examples of the categories include high-risk merchant activity, excessive transaction volumes for ATM and POS transactions as well as international transactions.

The sub-categories further define the type of transaction that was performed. An example is if a transaction has been identified as being performed at a high-risk merchant. The sub-category will provide the type of merchant it is, such as Mail and Telephone Order Services, which tells you it was a card not present transaction. The sub-categories are extremely helpful in identifying the reason the transaction is considered high-risk.

Lastly are the thresholds that are set for each category and sub-category. The thresholds include both a transaction amount and a transaction quantity. The amount is a dollar value and the quantity is the volume of transactions performed in a 24-hour period. When transactions meet or exceed these thresholds, they show on the report. Customizing these thresholds allows you to determine what you consider to be high-risk, unusual activity.

To customize a threshold value, email your request to eftprojects@shazam.net. Include the contact person’s name, email address, telephone number, your ABA, and a list of the threshold category(ies) and values you’re requesting to change.

Report Location and Format

The SCD0202 is one of SHAZAM’s standard daily reports located in the SETL (Settlement) folder by going to the Files tab on SHAZAM Access. Additionally, the report is created in a CSV file format, which makes it easy to download and sort so you can organize the data however you would like.

Additional Resources

To learn more about the SCD020 report, we encourage you to review the Report and Files section of SHAZAM Resource, which includes detailed report information along with a sample of the report.

We also created a series of short training videos, also available on SHAZAM Resource, to demonstrate how to download and open the report file and explain how to use the data to identify risky activity.

These resource items are available by going to SHAZAM Resource>Reports and Files>Fraud and Risk Management>SCD020.