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      • What is a Payment Card?
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• Hold onto receipts

  • Retain your receipts to reconcile them against your statements. If there are transactions on your account that you don’t recognise, contact your bank or card issuer immediately in order to have the issue investigated.

• Using your payment card abroad

• Verifying transactions: In some countries you are asked to provide photo identification (e.g. a passport), to key in a PIN and/or to sign a receipt in order to verify a transaction. These are simply added security procedures carried out by some shops - similar to the way in which shops here might ask you to initial your cash back on a debit card transaction. Chip and PIN is a European initiative and is 99% rolled out in Ireland.

• Advise your card issuer before you travel: You may wish to advise your bank or card issuer in advance of travelling abroad. In order to protect against fraudulent transactions on your card, banks operate fraud monitoring systems which alert them to unusual spending patterns. Generally the card issuer will contact the cardholder on detection of these unusual spending patterns.

• Cash back

  • When using your debit card, some shops will offer cash back with your purchase. This means that they will provide you with a limited amount of cash which is then added to the total purchase value. This facility allows a cardholder to pay for goods and obtain cash in a single transaction.

• Using your payment card on the Internet

  • The convenience of shopping on the Internet gives you access to retailers from around the world. Internet shopping is hugely popular among Irish cardholders with 20%-30% of Irish payment card transactions carried out in this way.

For further information on payment cards please click on the menu to the left.