“It’s worse than we thought”
Yes, dear readers, the so called experts are finally waking up and the UK press is jumping on it. Credit card fraud is worse than everyone thought! That’s the case in the U.S. too, but the experts haven’t quantified it yet.
Part of the reason, I think, in simple. Most of the fraud trends that we read about are from statistics gathered from merchants based on their actual losses to fraud. They don’t usually, if ever, take into account the fraudulent use of cards that merchant screen out and never process.
I’m not saying that actual fraud losses aren’t important; of course they are. Those are the numbers that can put merchants out of business. But I am here to tell you that fraud attempts are important too. They reflect the true nature of just how serious the problem is.
Card Not Present losses from UK issued cards are up 37% in the UK alone. That doesn’t reflect the losses outside of the UK from those cards. This 37% increase occurred at the same time that the Card Companies were pushing Payer Authentication and merchants were doing more to become PCI compliant and recognize fraudulent transactions before they were processed.
And lets not forget that cardholders are becoming more security conscious too. I think there’s almost as much tightened security from cardholders as there is in the industry.
The reported losses keep climbing in spite of all the new safeguards and initiatives, and we’re only seeing the actual losses - not the total picture. I have to believe the total is a lot bigger than the part we’re seeing in reports.
If someone in the industry cares to dispute that, the comments are open!
