Pre-Auth Charge/"tokens"

Teege
New Community Member

Hi all. On Saturday I noticed that there were 2 pending transactions on my bank account, $2 put in and then taken out, labeled has Pre Auth MasterCard St. Louis MO. Upon contacting the card company they asked if I was online at 1am and then mentioned something about Paypal and tokens. I have no idea what this means, so I'm trying to figure out if someone has gotten my card number and tried to purchase something, or if PayPal has some kind of policy that it checks if cards are active? Does anyone have any advice on what this could be? All I know is I can't remember the last time I used PayPal for anything and I wasn't online doing any shopping. Thank you!

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2 REPLIES 2

GreenKitten
Contributor
Contributor
Me too, just now...
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kalica_b
Contributor
Contributor
Hey there, I work in a bank. So what a "token" is the card company creating a spoof card number, linked to your actual card number. It's another layer of security, if for instance, paypal, netflix, Hulu accounts get hacked, the hackers get the "spoof" number, not your actual number. It's the same concept as Samsung Pay, Apple Pay, etc. If you want more info, Google "Mastercard Connect Tokens" I hope this helps. It's kind of confusing to explain and I wish companies would make their customers aware of it. I get weekly calls regarding this
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