11 February 2008
by Simon Quicke
Those concerned about cardholder not present fraud have been warned to remain vigilant despite the prospect of figures indicating that the problem is moving into other markets.
Official figures from APACS gathered by MicroScope indicate that most of the 44 per cent increase in CNP in the first six months of last year was soaked up by the gambling and travel industries.
A spokeswoman for APACS said that a detailed breakdown on fraud in the last year would be released next month and could not comment further.
Andrew Goodwill, managing director of anti-fraud service Early Warning, said that resellers still needed to worry about CNP because there were still plenty of criminals out there trying to catch them in a scam.
He said that it was possible to argue that CNP fraud levels had gone down relative to the increase in card spending but that was misleading for those in the channel still vulnerable to attack.
"There are still a core of fraudsters and it is still a minefield out there," he said.
Nick Glynne, managing director of Easy Computers, said fraud levels had significantly risen in the last six months because more resellers felt that they were covered by Verfied by Visa and as a result were not running as many checks.
He added that the other peoblem for the IT sector was that it was classed as high risk and as a result customer orders were sometimes being postponed while the banks checked on the identity of the person making the order.
"There is a real crisis of confidence out there that there wasn’t in the past around the
way people use credit cards," he added.
