As we enter the New Year, perhaps now is a good time to celebrate some of the real successes in 2009 and look at how we can continue this in 2010. One of the biggest successes was the significant decline in UK CNP fraud - by 18 per cent during the first half of 2009!
So what was done to achieve such a considerable reduction this year? To date, card schemes have led the charge in initiatives that address e-commerce fraud. Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode are initiatives that encourage customers to register in order to protect transactions with an additional password. The systems allow financial institutions to confirm a cardholder’s identity to the online retailer, thus making transactions more secure against fraudsters.
However, let’s not count our chickens before they’re hatched! Whilst this is indeed great news, banks need to keep on their toes in 2010 as criminals are continuously finding new ways to perpetrate fraud. One way that banks could stay one step ahead this year is for them to extend the use of card readers across all e-commerce activity, thus demonstrating to customers that they are being proactive in fighting fraud, and improving customer retention as a result.