About SkimGuard
Every year, criminals quietly attach wireless skimmers to the card readers people use every day — at the pump, the ATM, the checkout lane. SkimGuard turns ordinary phones into a sensor network that catches those signals before the next customer pays.
Why we exist
Modern card skimmers are wireless. A criminal installs one in seconds and never has to return — the device quietly transmits stolen card numbers over Bluetooth to someone parked nearby. To the person paying, nothing looks wrong. The reader works exactly as expected.
That invisibility is the whole problem. Victims don't find out until fraudulent charges appear, and by then the data has been sold many times over. The hardware is cheap, the payoff is large, and detection has always depended on someone physically inspecting every terminal.
We thought the signal that makes skimmers work could be the same signal that exposes them.
Our approach
A transmitting skimmer is a radio. SkimGuard listens for exactly those transmissions, so a single tap before you pay can flag a skimmer operating on the terminal in front of you — and warn the next person, too.
The SkimGuard app is free. Scan a terminal before you swipe, and see a live safety map of the places around you — built from real scans by real people.
Operators protect their terminals with handheld scans and always-on agents, get alerted the moment something suspicious appears, and earn a verified badge customers can trust.
Every scan strengthens a shared, public safety map — so the more people who carry SkimGuard, the harder it gets for a skimmer to go unnoticed anywhere.
Quick to raise concern, careful with the all-clear. We'd rather warn you twice than miss a skimmer once.
The company
SkimGuard is built and operated by SkimGuard, Inc., a US company on a single mission: make card-skimming detection something anyone can do, anywhere, for free — and give the businesses customers trust the tools to stay ahead of it.
We believe safety scales when it's shared. A lone inspector can check one terminal at a time; a network of everyday phones can check millions — continuously, and at no cost to the people it protects. That's the network we're building.
Questions, ideas, or press? Reach us at hello@skimguard.io.
SkimGuard is free. Scan before you pay — and help make skimmers visible everywhere.