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Card fraud grows - what a surprise
Archived article dated Saturday March 15th 2008
It beggars belief that the banking industry and APACS can announce that card fraud losses increased by 25 per cent in 2007 to £535.2 million and at the same time state that chip and PIN has been an undoubted success.
Yes, it has helped to reduce face-to-face transactions, but this is hardly the point when every man and his dog knew that fraudsters would simply perpetrate their acts in different ways such as online and via mail order once chip and PIN was universally adopted in UK stores.
As APACS points out, the key driver of the increased fraud levels has been the use of stolen UK card details being used overseas in markets where chip and PIN has yet to be rolled out. It was known that these countries would not be adopting the technology for some time so it can hardly be a surprise to the banks that the crooks are finding some rich pickings outside the UK.On its own, the idea for chip and PIN was never a bad one, but it also showed a lack of joined-up-thinking. Leaving other doors open to fraudsters ultimately means that chip and PIN cannot really be described as a great success.
Visa and MasterCard would argue that they have developed Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode to counter online fraud but then they've hardly made any great efforts to get it widely adopted by merchants.
And as for fraud going overseas, that seems to have been completely overlooked. The only solution is for these other countries to adopt the technology but they simply don't seem to be in any rush to do so as the banks are not pushing hard enough.
Tagged as: apacs | card fraud | glynn davis
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