The Card Recovery Bulletin (CRB) is a list of payment cards that have been reported as lost, stolen, cancelled, or compromised. The purpose of this list is to inform merchants of compromised cards so they can decline transactions that are likely unauthorised.
NOTE
Historically, merchants had to manually consult the bulletin to determine if a card should be accepted for payment. Today, the authorisation process conducts this check automatically.
Even though Visa still maintains a chargeback reason code related to the CRB’s use, the term Card Recovery Bulletin is not commonly used in the payments industry today. Other terms — such as authorisation declines, hot card files, exception files, etc. — are more relevant to the modern authorisation process that replaced manual bulletin checks.
Transactions accepted without authorisation — thus bypassing the CRB — may be subject to chargebacks.
At AltoPay, these checks are built into the payment processing workflow so you don’t inadvertently accept compromised cards and accounts. This automatic process helps reduce fraud and prevent unnecessary chargebacks from hurting your bottom line.
