Consumers Key to Preventing Card Fraud

Payment card issuers’ fraud prevention measures are lagging behind those for fraud resolution and detection, according to Javelin Research’s Seventh Annual Issuer Safety Scorecard. Most of the leading U.S. card issuers have received poor grades for consumer education and fraud prevention for the last three years, says Javelin’s Phil Blank. Javelin found that institutions are not collaborating with security vendors to deal with mounting anxieties about card-not-present fraud, nor are they deploying multifactor or second-layer authentication that relies on the mobile channel. The research implies that only the customer can combat card-not-present fraud, underscoring the need for card issuers to involve consumers in second-layer transaction approval. “The mobile channel could be used to send alerts to customers about card transactions,” Blank says. He says fraud would decline if issuers implemented policies for consumers to review and respond to mobile prompts as second layers for transaction authentication.