VISA PLATINUM CREDIT CARD BENEFITS

No, there are no fees for bal­ance trans­fers. How­ev­er, inter­est does start accru­ing imme­di­ate­ly from the day the bal­ance trans­fer is processed.

You can sub­mit the request at your con­ve­nience using the Bal­ance Trans­fer wid­get in Online & Mobile Bank­ing. Trans­fer amounts are sent as a check – you’ll need to pro­vide the pay­ment infor­ma­tion as not­ed on your bills for the account you are pay­ing with the bal­ance trans­fer – pay­ee name, pay­ment address, and account num­ber. You can also sub­mit a bal­ance trans­fer request by phone or live chat, or when you vis­it the branch.

No, you only earn rewards points for pur­chas­es. Bal­ance trans­fers and cash advances do not qualify.

Points are award­ed for qual­i­fy­ing pur­chas­es using your par­tic­i­pat­ing SF Fire Cred­it Union Plat­inum or Busi­ness Visa. You earn one point for every dol­lar of your purchases.

Your cur­rent avail­able points bal­ance is list­ed in the top right cor­ner of every page of your SF Fire Cred­it Union rewards redemp­tion site.

Your accrued points will also be dis­played on your month­ly state­ment, but those totals will pos­si­bly be out of date, as they will reflect your bal­ance as of the last day of the pri­or month (as of May 30th for your June 15th state­ment, for example).

Spe­cial note: the July 15th state­ment will show your point total as of June 30th, but at the stan­dard rate of 1 point per dol­lar of every pur­chase. You’ll see the addi­tion­al bonus points from the triple points pro­mo­tion on the August statement. 

There are mul­ti­ple ways you can order your reward — by phone or via the rewards web­site, which is acces­si­ble through either Online or Mobile Banking.

• To place your order over the phone, please call our mem­ber ser­vice num­ber (866.221.5802)
• When speak­ing to a rep­re­sen­ta­tive, please be as spe­cif­ic as pos­si­ble regard­ing the brand and name of the reward you want, the col­or and size (if this applies) and the item num­ber (if you know it) to ensure the desired reward is ordered cor­rect­ly (ex: Apple 64 GB 4th Gen­er­a­tion iPod Touch in black).
• You can also order your reward through the web­site via Online Bank­ing or the Mobile Bank­ing app. You can browse through the var­i­ous rewards cat­e­gories right from the home page, then:

1. Select the reward you want.
2. Select “Add to cart” to place your order. Click on the cart icon in the top head­er at any point to “Check­out.” You can also change quan­ti­ties of items direct­ly from the cart or remove items from the cart.
3. Review items in cart and click “Pro­ceed to Checkout.”
4. Con­firm redemp­tion infor­ma­tion and enter your phone num­ber and email address. Then click on “Con­tin­ue to Ship­ping Infor­ma­tion to move to the next step
5. You can either enter the ship­ping address or select the check box “Same as Redemp­tion Infor­ma­tion” if the ship­ping address is the same. Click on “Con­tin­ue to Review.”
6. Select “Place Order” to com­plete your order. You will receive an order con­fir­ma­tion with the option to print the con­fir­ma­tion for your records, and an email con­fir­ma­tion will be sent to the email address you provided.

Log in to your account to access your Cred­it Card Rewards. For Mobile Bank­ing, click on “More” and select “More Ser­vices”. Choose “View & Redeem Cred­it Card Rewards” to con­tin­ue to the rewards site. For Online Bank­ing, click on “More Ser­vices” and select “View & Redeem Cred­it Card Rewards” to con­tin­ue to the rewards site.

Tap to Pay cards let you make pay­ments with­out run­ning your card through a ter­mi­nal. It’s a touch-free pay­ment method; you sim­ply hold the card with­in 2 inch­es of the Contactless/Tap to Pay sym­bol on the ter­mi­nal (in oth­er words, you don’t have to lit­er­al­ly tap the card against any­thing). In some cas­es, it may take a sec­ond or two for the trans­ac­tion to com­plete, so don’t pull the card away too quick­ly. To indi­cate when the trans­ac­tion is com­plete, the pay­ment ter­mi­nal may beep, dis­play a green check­mark, or flash a green light.

Tap to Pay cards are as secure as EMV chip cards because they both use the same secu­ri­ty stan­dards for trans­ac­tions. Whether you’re using a Tap to Pay card or insert­ing your EMV chip card, the sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion sent is encrypted.

You’ll see a Contactless/Tap to Pay Sym­bol, either on the ter­mi­nal or dis­played promi­nent­ly by the mer­chant. It looks some­thing like a Wi-Fi sym­bol (three or four con­cen­tric arcs of dif­fer­ent sizes) turned sideways. 

Tech­ni­cal­ly, you use a Tap to Pay card that is embed­ded with a Con­tact­less chip. How­ev­er, the terms Tap to Pay and Con­tact­less are basi­cal­ly interchangeable.

You’ll still have the option to swipe the card for a magstripe read or dip it in an EMV chip read­er. You’re not los­ing any options, just gain­ing the con­tact­less option.

No. While it is tech­ni­cal­ly pos­si­ble for some­one to skim infor­ma­tion remote­ly from your Tap to Pay card, they would need to be extreme­ly close to you with very spe­cif­ic equip­ment to do so. Addi­tion­al­ly, any infor­ma­tion they could skim could only be used for a sin­gle fraud­u­lent trans­ac­tion, due to the nature of the encryp­tion used for Tap to Pay trans­ac­tions. For these rea­sons, most crim­i­nals pre­fer eas­i­er targets.

Pre­cau­tions you can take include: 

• Stay aware of your sur­round­ings, espe­cial­ly of any strange per­son get­ting very close to you.
• Keep your card(s) in a front pocket.
• Buy an RFID-block­ing (Radio Fre­quen­cy Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion) card sleeve, wal­let or purse.