extranet log inCan banks stay ahead of the fraud game? /Market commentary by Elliot Castro/
Elliot Castro, independent consultant and former credit card fraudster, was speaking alongside 192 Business Services at a pre-paid card summit in London.
Source: Finextra.
Credit Cards May Pull Back $2 Trillion in Lending
The U.S. credit-card industry may pull back well over $2 trillion of lines over the next 18 months due to risk aversion and regulatory changes, leading to sharp declines in consumer spending.
Source: CNBC
Cybercriminals tap $8 billion underground credit line
Criminals who specialise in credit card and bank account theft have ready access to a global underground marketplace with an estimated total fraud value of $8 billion.
Source: Finextra
Visa Sets Global PCI DSS Deadlines
Visa has announced global mandates for compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) - saying it is "creating a consistent framework for compliance among merchants, service providers and their agents."
Banks and mobile operators form m-payments association
Seven banks and four mobile operators have formed a not-for-profit association to promote the deployment of an interoperable mobile payment service in France.
Source: Finextra.
Fraudsters rigging Chip and PIN terminals to steal data - report
Hundreds of Chip and PIN terminals in shops and supermarkets across Europe have been rigged by criminals and used to steal shoppers' card details, according to US national counter-intelligence executive Joel Brenner.
Source: Finextra
APACS (UK) Announces Latest Card Fraud Losses
APACS (UK) has released its latest summary of card fraud statistics showing that total card fraud losses increased by 14 per cent in the six months to June 2008 compared with the first half of 2007. Total card fraud losses for this period were £301.7m, of which more than 40 per cent was the result of fraud outside the UK - which typically involves criminals using stolen UK card details at cash machines and retailers in countries that have yet to upgrade to chip and PIN.
Source: APACS
Visa encourages better money skills with new financial education website
Visa Europe launched a financial education website today called Better Money Skills (www.bettermoneyskills.com). This is a new resource for member banks to coach consumers on financial matters and ultimately help encourage responsible spending.
Source: Visa Europe
Barclaycard chief predicts death of plastic cards
Plastic cards could be set to go the way of cheques and become virtually obsolete as customers take up mobile and biometric systems to pay for purchases, according to Barclaycard which is ramping up its investment in contactless payment technology.
Source: Finextra
Card activity in Russia
According to the results of the second semester of the 2008 year more than half of the issued cards in Russia turned out to be inactive, as it was stated by the head of retail payments development department of Central Bank Mr Vadim Kuznetsov. In Central Bank inactive cards are those, which haven’t been used for any operation during three months’ time.
Russian payment systems have the highest percentage of active cards (60-70%), Mr Vadim Kuznetsov said. In overall, on 1 July domestic banks have issued 14,7 million cards of Russian payment systems (Unified Russian Payment System, “Zolotaya Corona”, NCC, etc). On the same date “Zolotaya Corona” had 3,1 million active cards, URPS – 2,8 million.
„According to our estimates the share of active cards in „Zolotaya Corona” is around 70-75%”, explained Mr Vadim Gritsanenko, the Director of “Zolotaya Corona” payment system. It is explained by the lack of postal distribution of credit cards: banks send out by post cards of international payment systems. Cards that were sent out sometimes are not being activated no to mention using them on a continuous basis. “In accordance with my estimates only 20-25% of cards sent out by post are being activated”, says the Vice President of Citibank Mr Yuriy Topunov. “Strong growth in international system card emission happened when the banks started to send out cards. However, the volume of operations did not grow proportionally”, Mr Gritsanenko remarks.
As reported by the Central Bank, VISA system owns more than 55,2% active cards: 29,3 million cards from 53,1 million issued, MasterCard has 14,5 million active cards (33,4%) from total number of 43,4 million issued. The reason of the noticeable difference in the share of active cards is said to be the distribution of credit cards by post. “If compared by the share of the Russian credit card market, MasterCard is ahead of VISA. Three major players that distribute cards by post (Russkiy Standard, Home credit, Renaissance capital) generally issue MasterCards credit cards. OTP Bank, which distributes VISA cards, does not possess such a large share of the market”, Mr Topunov explains. “As not all clients activate their cards, it makes it hard to define the exact share of active cards in this payment system”, he summarized.
Credit card holders can be divided into two categories. In the first category there are people who are using their cards regularly or they use them in the framework of available sources on the account, or for small payments on credit, which typically is settled during the grace period, claims the head of representative office of MasterCard in Russia Mr Ilya Ryabiy. In the second category there are people, who have received the card for a large-scale purchase, then made it and after they are paying out the credit, and during that time they don’t perform other operations. This type of card becomes inactive, Mr Ryabiy says. According to his estimate, in Russia the major part of clients gets credit cards especially for large purchases. Mr Ryabiy notes that Russians still have to learn to use credit cards for regular payments.
Source: Ведомости
Russia card growth slows down
Year after the year Russian banks issue less plastic cards. Increase of the cards issued during the first semester of the 2008 year was only 7,7%, although in the 2007 the increase reached 38,4% while earlier it even exceeded 50%. Market players believe that the boost on the cards market which happened generally as a result of salary projects is over now and further on the market will grow by the means of the credit card issue.
As it was stated by the head of retail pyments development of the Bank of Russia Mr Vadim Kuznetsov yesterday, quantity of the bank cards in Russia on 1 July of this year has reached 111,467 million against 103,497 million cards in the beginning of last year. Thus the gain measures 7,7%. If that kind of growth pace remains in the second semester of the year, annual gain will amount at only 15-16%. The trend of the slowdown of the growth in cards issue has been observed during the last three years. During 2007 the amount of the bank’s cards growth was 38,4%, and for year 2006 - 36,7%. At the same time the volume of issued cards in Russia for 2005 constituted 55,4%, for year 2004 – 46,3%, for year 2003 – 55,4%.
According to the Central Bank data, on 1 July 2008 the major part of the overall amount of bank cards issued in Russia (80%) belongs to the international payment systems and constitutes 96,778 million cards, whereas the ones issued by Russian payment systems – 16,647 million. 49,6 million of Russian citizens have VISA cards, MasterCards cards belong to 43,3 million of Russian citizens. Russian payment system cards called “Zolotaya Corona” belong to 5,1 million people, and the cards of the Unified Russian payment system (earlier called “Sberkart”) are held by 3,2 million people. At the same time if we compare the systems that have the biggest number of corporate clients, the leaders are VISA with 46,8000 corporate clients and the Unified Russian payment system with 15,8000 corporate clients. Among the clients of MasterCard 14,2000 are corporate bodies, and among the clients of “Zolotaya Corona” these make up 12,000 of all clients.
The overall number of VISA cards issued by the Russian banks equals to 53 million cards and those of MasterCard – 43,35 million. There have been 5,67 million of „Zolotaya Corona” cards issued and 3,2 million Unfied russian payment system cards. As explained by Mr Vadim Kuznetsov, only 28,29 million of VISA cards are active. MasterCard has even less active cards– 14,48 million, payment system „Zolotaya Corona” – 3,13 million cards and Unified Russian payment system – 2,76 million cards. Still the citizens use their cards just for cash withdrawal; which makes up 92,6% of all operations.
As it was stated by the head of marketing and retail business department of the MDM bank Anatoly Kraynikov, in the period of time from 2003 to 2006 the amount of cards on the market rose due to salary projects. “These days almost all large and medium-sized enterprises transfer salary payments to bank accounts. In small enterprises the high growth in cards cannot be achieved. Meanwhile salary projects just flow from a bank to a bank, comments Anatoly Kraynikov. “Maybe the boosting growth on the card market has reached its end”. According to the Vice President of the Moscow bank of reconstruction and development Albert Zvezdochkin, the number of cards (11 million) is approaching the size of population in Russia, which is about 145 million people. As Albert Zvezdochkin explains, “People are satiated with the simple banking product – the debit card issued in the framework of salary projects. Only 10% of all cards are credit cards. In future the share of credit cards in the structure of card portfolio will be growing, as for the bank it is a more lucrative and profitable instrument”.
Source: РБК Daily
Irish shops hit by card skimming gang
Irish authorities are warning retailers to be on high alert for a criminal gang that skimmed thousands of cards by masquerading as eftpos engineers and replacing legitimate terminals with compromised units in stores.
Source: Finextra
Police Bust UK Card Fraud Factory
The Dedicated Cheque and Plastic Crime Unit (DCPCU), a special police unit that tackles UK card fraud, raided a sophisticated counterfeit card factory in Birmingham.
Source: ePaynews.com
Banks of Ukraine have increased the volume of issued plastic cards
The National Bank of Ukraine informs that the overall quantity of plastic cards issued by Ukrainian banks in the first half of the 2008 has risen by 9% - from 41,162,500 cards to 44,700,100 cards.
Thus during the first semester of the year 2008 the amount of technical equipment that serves payment cards has grown respectively: quantity of ATM’s – by 2,694 to 23,625, payment terminals – by 10,933 to 105,310, imprinters – by 19,355 and reached 73,761.
In particular the quantity of ATM’s with the function of cash depositing has gone up by 414 to reach 590, with the distribution function – by 1,973 to 22,419, with the function of both – by 307 and achieved 616 cash machines. Speaking about payment terminals, the number of the trading terminals among them has increased by 9,089 and reached 76,322, the quantity of the banking ones has risen by 1,904 to reach 28,988.
Let us remember the volume of operations using payment cards, issued by the Ukrainian banks, amounts to 311,5 million approximately.
Source: UABanker
Global Trail of an Online Crime Ring
In an article titled "Global Trail of an Online Crime Ring", Brad Stone writes for the New York Times about the investigation leading up to last weeks announcement by the Department of Justice and other agencies about the indictments of 11 people involved in compromising millions of credit and debit card accounts.
Source: The NY Times.
Retail report shines light on predicted trends within European retail industry by 2012-15
There are big changes on the European retail horizon, according to part 2 of a report commissioned by Visa Europe. Asked to make their predictions on the state and development of their industry by 2012-15, retailers across Europe felt that several key issues, including social responsibility, payment technology, and customer behaviour, would have a dramatic effect on their outlets and the shape of retail as a whole.
Full text here.
Download report: The Store of the Future 2012-15, part II (PDF 0.2MB)
Source: Visa Europe
Fraud specialists reveal UK card fraud hotspots and fraudsters’ tricks of the trade
The most comprehensive picture of card fraud in the UK is revealed today as experts in the fight against credit card crime reveal the true extent and nature of the problem facing innocent consumers and retailers. New research published by The 3rd Man and 192business.com identifies where the major fraud hotspots are throughout the UK and reveals exactly how card criminals ply their trade.
Source: The 3rd Man.
MasterCard Worldwide Expands PCI Merchant Education Program
MasterCard extends popular program, adding three new seminars to build merchants’ knowledge on data security standards.
MasterCard Worldwide today announced the availability of three new seminars designed to help merchants protect payment card data and reduce the likelihood of reputational risk and the incidence of fraud.
The new seminars are titled "Data Encryption: Understanding Encryption and PCI DSS," "Network Segmentation," and "Maximize Internal Preparations for PCI DSS." The seminars expand MasterCard's PCI Merchant Education Program, an initiative offered to acquiring bank customers to provide practical assistance in educating merchants and encouraging broader adoption of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). More...
Source: MasterCard
Contactless Holds No Allure for Europeans
Europeans have little appetite to use either cards or cellphones to make contactless payments, according to a study by Forrester Research. Of 14,345 European Internet users surveyed by Forrester, only 23 percent said that they were interested in using contactless cards for making purchases in stores.
Source: www.epaynews.com
Security fears raised over London Oyster card
New fears have been raised about the security of London's contactless Oyster travel card after Dutch scientists managed to use a cloned card to travel around on the city's underground for free.
Source: Finextra
Line of Credit Linked to U.S. Prepaid Card
Meta Payment Systems (MPS) is offering small loans that are deposited on a prepaid card to the millions of Americans who cannot afford conventional bank loans. The U.S. prepaid card firm originally launched the iAdvance Line of Credit product in February 2008, but is now enhancing it with the help of Fiserv and TransUnion.
Source: ePaynews.com
MasterCard's Temporary Repeal of Intra-EEA Interchange Fees
MasterCard Europe (MCE) has announced that "as of June 21, 2008 MasterCard is temporarily repealing its current MasterCard and Maestro intra-EEA cross-border consumer card interchange fees in conformity with the European Commission's December 19, 2007 decision.
MCE said it will continue its dialogue with the Commission services about an interchange fee methodology that the Commission services believe is consistent with the decision. MCE also said it will continue to pursue its appeal of the decision to the European Court of First Instance, which it filed on March 1." More...
Source: MasterCard
Verizon Business Releases Trailblazing Data-Breach Study Spanning 500 Forensic Investigations
Nearly nine in 10 corporate data breaches could have been prevented had reasonable security measures been in place, according to a comprehensive report issued today by Verizon Business. The study also provides key recommendations to help businesses protect themselves and urges them to be proactive.
The “2008 Data Breach Investigations Report” spans four years and more than 500 forensic investigations involving 230 million records, and analyzes hundreds of corporate breaches including three of the five largest ones ever reported. This first-of-its-kind study, conducted by Verizon Business Security Solutions investigative experts, also found that 73 percent of breaches resulted from external sources versus 18 percent from insider threats, and most breaches resulted from a combination of events rather than a single hack or intrusion. More....
Source: Verizon Business
Number of credit cards in Russia continues to grow
According to the Central Bank annual report the number of credit cards has reached 8.9 million which is 58% increase since 2007. The overall figure of distributed bank cards was 103.5 million, its growth was 1.5 times slower than in the previous year and represents 38,4%. As the Central Bank experts explain, the decrease is the consequence of salary projects. Among other factors they list the availability of distant banking service with help of cards, as well the consumer lending development.
So far the Central Bank has not revealed any particular figures on the credit cards. However the indicators it provided where the same as “Home Credit and Finance Bank” analysts’ estimation, stated in the research about consumer lending in the year 2007. The monetary value of the credit cards’ market is estimated to be 178 billion rubles that is 15% more than in 2006.
Postal distribution is an important factor influencing credit cards’ market growth. However in Russia depends a great deal on the leader’s position. As the researchers of the HCF bank stated, „Russki Standart” has reduced limits significantly and has cut the sales of new cards, which has influenced badly the pace of bank’s card portfolio’s advancement and annual results of the whole segment. Nevertheless, the share of clients, who have never been offered to use a credit card, as well by the competitor bank, has decreased from 30% in 2005 to 20-25% in 2007, as it was estimated in HCF bank.
The number of issued cards is growing each year. „VTB 24” (with 100 000 cards distributed) and „Ursa bank” (estimate of 500 000 distributed cards at the end of the year) has joined the distribution process. From June Sberbank will also start the issuing (this year it is planning to issue 300 000 cards).
SOURCE: Bankir.ru
Dynamic Credit Card hopes to transform the plastic you carry
Pittsburgh entrepreneur Jeff Mullen has created a sophisticated credit card that may forever change the technology behind the thin pieces of plastic you carry.
Dynamics LLC, a startup emerging from Project Olympus, is positioning itself to be the next-generation payment solution for a $4 trillion domestic industry that has suffered massive losses due to credit card fraud. Mullen estimates that $25 billion is lost annually by card companies through fraudulent card purchases and theft. More...
Full presentation here.
Source: POPcityMedia
1 million euro stolen in bank card fraud
Around one million euro has been stolen from 300 bank accounts in one of the largest incidents of bank card fraud ever in Ireland.
It is understood bank cards were cloned at points of sale in shops and restaurants around Dublin in the last few weeks. More...
Source: Irish Independent
Brits risk card fraud with slack security
Around half of Brits are leaving themselves wide open to credit card and bank account fraud due to slack security practices, according to a survey conducted by UK consumer association Which? Money.
Which? says about half of the 4,119 people surveyed admit to using the same PIN number for more than one card. This contrasts with research from price comparison Web site Moneysupermarket last month which found that only a quarter of cardholders use the same PIN number for all their credit and debit cards. More...
Source: Finextra.com
What makes a cyber criminal?
Cyber crime - internet banking and credit card fraud - is now the fastest growing sector of global organised crime, increasing at a rate of about 40% per year.
With Brazil thought to have by far the largest number of cyber criminals, Misha Glenny, reporting for the BBC World Service's How Crime Took On The World, went to meet some of those trying to profit from the $100bn (£51bn) industry.
Source: www.crime-research.org
Next Version of PCI DSS Set for October
The PCI Security Standards Council says it will launch the next version of the Payments Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) in October 2008.
Source: PCI Security Standards Council.
European Consumers Turn From Cash To Prepaid For Financial Control
Nearly three quarters of European consumers (71%) appreciate the financial control a prepaid payment card offers, when presented with the potential benefits compared to cash and cheques, and recognise that it would stop them from overspending, according to new independent research commissioned by MasterCard.
Source: MasterCard
Phishers take aim at MasterCard SecureCode
Security experts are warning of a new phishing scam in which fraudsters are targeting MasterCard customers with false promises of discounts on future purchases.
Source: Finextra
European Banks Plan Alternative to Visa, MasterCard
Major French and German banks are studying the feasibility of a pan-European card system to rival Visa and MasterCard, according to the French Banking Federation (FBF).
Source: ePaynews.com
Card fraud threatens development of European payments network
Credit and debit card fraud continues to undermine consumer confidence and threatens to hinder the development of a cross-border payments network in Europe, according to a European Commission (EC) report.
Source: ePaynews.com
European ATM Skimming Fraud Jumps 43%
In 2007, ATM fraud losses rose by 43 percent in Europe to €439.01 million (US$683.7 million) from €306.48 million in 2006, reports EAST (the European ATM Security Team). Most of the losses in 2006 and 2007 were due to card-skimming at ATMs, the non-profit organization says.
Source: ePaynews.com