Visa Europe said it is testing a service that sends cardholders text messages notifying them of purchases made with debit, credit and prepaid cards.
U.K. employees of Visa Inc.'s European franchise are evaluating the service, which is designed to let cardholders quickly spot suspicious and fraudulent transactions.
Ideally, the service would send the alerts before a checkout clerk can hand a card back to a customer at the point of sale. The alerts can also be delivered by e-mail.