You know that security chip on your credit card, that came with all the fanfare back in 2015? The chip was to stop in-store fraudulent transactions. But, as more and more of us do our shopping and banking online, so have the thieves moved online to steal our information.
Bloomberg reports, the adoption of credit-card chip technology by U.S. retailers is having an unintended consequence: Criminals are moving from brick-and-mortar stores to the internet.
The use of stolen card data to pay for merchandise on websites, in mobile apps and by dialing call centers surged 40 percent last year, according to a report from Javelin Strategy & Research released Wednesday. That’s forcing merchants to spend billions on online fraud protection in an effort to detect when a crook is using someone else’s card number.
“We are seeing more sophisticated type of fraud moving into the online environment,” said Erika Dietrich, global director of payments risk management at fraud fighter ACI Worldwide.
By the end of last year, almost 1.81 million U.S. merchants had switched to accepting European-style chip cards, more than double the number the year before, according to Visa Inc. Issued by banks, cards containing the so-called EMV technology are much harder to counterfeit, which cuts down on in-person fraud at stores.
By Bloomberg, excerpt posted on SouthFloridaReporter.com, Feb. 6, 2017
