SafeSignals LLC is an independent, founder-led company on a mission to make credit card skimmer detection accessible to everyone — consumers and businesses alike.
SafeSignals wasn't born in a lab or a venture studio. It was built by someone who spent years managing payment infrastructure at a major retail chain — someone who saw skimming attacks happen firsthand, dealt with the aftermath, and got frustrated that the only real solution was asking employees to remember to look at terminals.
Manual inspection is inadequate. Skimming hardware is designed to be invisible. The only real answer is technology that watches continuously, reports instantly, and doesn't require anyone to remember to check.
SkimGuard is that answer — first as a mobile app that puts detection in anyone's hands, and later as dedicated hardware for businesses that want fully automated protection.
We're a focused, bootstrapped company. We move quickly, we build what actually works, and we stay honest about what we are and what we're not.
Joe brings over a decade of experience in security and wireless technology development, combined with hands-on operational experience managing payment terminal infrastructure across a large retail chain. That first-hand experience — seeing how skimming attacks unfold and why they go undetected — is what drove him to build SafeSignals and SkimGuard.
Credit card skimming costs American consumers and businesses more than $1 billion annually, according to the FBI. A single compromised terminal can silently capture 30 to 100 cards per day. The average skimming incident lasts nearly a week before anyone detects it — by which time hundreds of cards have been stolen and victims have no idea.
The fraud doesn't show up until days or weeks later when fraudulent charges appear. By then, the skimmer is gone, the criminal is untraceable, and the damage is done. The business that hosted the compromised terminal faces chargebacks, PCI fines, and reputational damage. Their customers face the hassle and anxiety of card fraud.
SkimGuard addresses this with a community-powered approach: put detection capability in everyone's pocket, incentivize reporting, and give businesses the tools — and the fair warning — to fix problems before they become public disasters.