Every time that I use a credit card there are two receipts. One for me, one for the merchant. Why is it that they only show part of the Card# on my receipt, yet the one that I leave with complete strangers shows the entire number?!? I always scratch it out with a pen if possible. That just seems backwards. Why would they need to cross out the receipt that they give to me? I have the card. I know what the number is. They have no need to hide it from me. I'm more concerned about the clerk at Target that is earning $8/hr handling my valuable personal financial info. Is there a reason for this? Some of you people run businesses. Why is it backwards like that?

On a somewhat related note, I found an interesting article at WSJ about it:
[online.wsj.com]

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Interesting; I always looked at both receipts and never noticed that the full number is on the merchant's slip; it's usually the same (the first three sets of four numbers are "XXXX" out). I'll have to start noticing a little more thoroughly again.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/05/2007 10:58AM by Zoidberg.

my guess is that the merchant copy is stored properly (or at least it should be, not taking into account the clerk earning $8/hr). So they need the full number as a hard copy, just in case there is a system failure or something.

On the other hand, your copy goes in your wallet, and most people throw it in the trash (instead of shredder). Or perhaps you need it for expense reimbursement, in which case you don't want the lady from accounting to know your full CC number. I guess it offers some sort of protection. after all, you do not need to see the full CC number on the receipt, do you? you know the number, it's on your card.

Sometimes the wallet gets lost or stolen, but in that case the CC is in the wallet too, so that's probably not the main reason.

The store has lots of opportunities to get your credit card's whole number.

If I were a bank I think it would be much more difficult to identify fraud from among tens of millions of customer's discarded receipts than it would be to track it down coming from one dishonest employee at a common store.

The store needs it to prove that they swiped or keyed in your credit card number. If all they had was the last 4 digits the couldn't prove much. Also, per their agreement with the card issuer, they need your signature on a receipt with the entire card number.

Your copy doesn't have the whole number as a safety thing. In case you lose it, or throw it out, or whatever. The store keeps their copy of the reciept safe, if they loose it they have no proof that you purchased anything.

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C(-)ris
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Quote
ztirffritz
I'...m more concerned about the clerk at Target that is earning $8/hr handling my valuable personal financial info. ...

BTW: the Targets in this area have a thing where you stick the card in, sign the LCD display, then it spits the card back, you never give the card to the clerk, and I believe (but I am not sure) that there is no hard copy printed out for the clerk to handle.