Stolen, Sold, Spent: Inside the Compromised Card Economy Ahead of Black Friday

Black Friday is big business for fraudsters, too. While consumers prepare for the holiday shopping season, stolen payment card data is already moving through an underground economy of suppliers, criminal marketplaces, and fraudsters looking to turn compromised cards into money. Loosened transaction rules, high retail velocities, and major consumer demand create a perfect storm for fraud.

But there's an important distinction between a card being compromised and that card being used for fraud. The steps in between create opportunities for financial institutions to identify exposed cards and intervene before losses occur.

Join Outseer's Maximilian Gebhardt for a look inside the compromised card economy, drawing on real-world dark web intelligence from the 2024 holiday shopping season. We'll follow the journey of stolen card data through wholesale suppliers, criminal card shops, and validation services — examining what these activities reveal about fraudster behavior and where banks may have opportunities to get ahead of the attack.

In this session, we'll explore:

• Follow the stolen card: How compromised payment cards move through underground markets, from initial acquisition and wholesale distribution to validation, resale, and attempted fraud.
• What Black Friday intelligence reveals: A look at actual 2024 criminal-market activity, including card-shop inventories, checker activity, and communications — and what these signals tell us about the timing and preparation of fraud.
• Turning intelligence into intervention: How banks can use compromised-card intelligence to identify exposure earlier, prioritize responses, and potentially prevent fraud without automatically replacing every exposed card.
• The economics of getting ahead: Why preventing fraud isn't just about avoiding fraudulent transactions — it's also about reducing investigations, customer calls, replacement costs, and disruption to valuable cardholder relationships.

The best time to identify a compromised card is before a fraudster uses it.

Join us to see how the stolen-card economy operates, what banks can learn from the criminals themselves, and how earlier intelligence can create opportunities to act before fraud reaches the customer.

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