The Study On The Allocation Of Civil Liability For Fraudulent Use Of Credit Cards

Credit card, a special kind of bank card with the function of overdraft, is issued to the cardholder by the bank. Fraudulent use of credit card is that someone, who claims himself to be the cardholder, uses the credit card to go shopping or withdraw without authorization of the legitimate cardholder. With the amount of credit card increasing, the fraudulent use of credit card is increasing too. After credit card is fraudulently used, who suffer the loss is an urgent issue. There is no legal norm to explicitly stipulate civil liability for fraudulent use of credit card, so the division of responsibilities is unclear between cardholders, banks and merchants, which arises the litigants to shirk responsibility. In fact, the relationship between bank, cardholder and merchant is initiated by the bank, they all benefit from credit card business. It is unfair that issuing banks set a single standard term to transfer all loss to cardholders before the loss of credit card is reported, because the banks ignore the design risk of credit card and the diversity of credit card losing. In the use of credit cards, the cardholder should have obligation to safekeep card, the bank should censor merchants and train their cashier, and the merchant should review the credit card carefully. The success of fraudulent use of credit card is related to cardholder, bank and merchant. If the cardholders don’t fulfill their obligations, they should be liable in accordance with the contract. If the banks and merchants fail to fulfill their obligations, they should bear civil liability in conformity with their respective fault. Since the contractual restrictions on relativity, the most cases of credit cards fraudulently using take tort trial mode. Under the circumstance, in the case of credit card fraudulently using, trial standard is the general fault principle and the adducing evidence is who advocate who proof, so it is hard for cardholder to protect his interests. For protecting cardholder legitimate rights, for realizing the substantive equality of litigants and for overcoming the problems of proof in the trial of fraudulent use of credit card, we should learn other foreign countries’advanced experience to improve the relevant legal framework, such as limiting liability of cardholder, inversing evidential burden to banks and merchants etc.