Figures from the UK Cards Association, which represents UK credit and debit card issuers, reveal that online banking fraud losses in the UK totalled £24.9m in January to June 2010 – a 36% fall on the 2009 half-year figure. The association attributed the decline in fraud to increased customer awareness of the need to protect their own computers with up-to-date anti-virus software and banks' use of fraud detection software.
The association also noted that the use of MasterCard SecureCode and Verified by Visa were also helping to lower online card fraud.
Melanie Johnson, chair of the UK Cards Association, said, "These figures are testament to the importance that the UK's card companies place on driving down card fraud losses and reducing any inconvenience to customers. We are determined to make sure that customers feel as safe and secure as possible when they use their cards. To that end the banking industry is committed to detecting and preventing card fraud in all its guises."
Cards with an updated integrated circuit card verification value (iCVV) have been rolled out in the UK since 1 January 2008. The UK Cards Association said these cards are designed to tackle fraudsters who tamper with chip and Pin terminals to harvest card details. If an iCVV card was compromised in this way, the data would be useless to the fraudster because a fake magnetic stripe card created via a compromise of this type would not work overseas in a non-chip and Pin country.
This story was first published by Computer Weekly