What Is Being Done to Combat Fraud?

In order to combat credit card fraud, the banking industry have formed the Payment Industry and Police Joint Intelligence Unit. This new agency will be responsible for for dealing with all types of fraud and will no longer be limited to physical credit card and cheque fraud.

The Metropolitan Police also have a unit specifically to deal with cheque/credit card frauds – the Dedicated Cheque and Plastic Crime Unit. Although based in London this unit works nationally.  This unit contains both serving police officers and experts from the banking industry. They largely concentrate on serious and organised crime. Their primary source of leads to work on comes from intelligence from banking institutions regarding specific frauds they have became the victim of.

Card Watch are also providing training to retailers who accept credit card payments. This helps to lower fraud in the retail sector as the shop owners become aware of what to be suspicious of during a credit card transaction, as well as how to detect forged bank cards.

Intelligence systems are being developed by the major banks to quickly identify patterns in a cards use that could indicate fraudulent activity. For example, if a credit card is used to buy high-risk items such as iPods several times within a short timeframe, the card would be locked pending further investigation.

If fraud figures can be lowered, it is the consumers who will benefit. Although credit card holders are not liable for transactions on their card that they did not authorise, ultimately it is them that pay the price due to higher interest rates imposed by the banks.