Australia defended by Visa against credit card fraud

In a move to accelerate Australia's migration to chip and PIN card technology Visa made its proposals in a five year program formulated for improving the payment system security in the country. Within the following 5 year period Visa is planning to implement 7 key initiatives including the shift to 100% chip card issuance to take place earlier than it was planned before.

In addition, the plan outlined by the card network also suggests that all merchant terminals and ATMs in Australia should be chip-capable with the PIN verification to be widely adopted for all domestic transactions so as to eliminate usage of signatures. With that, Visa proposes all online merchants to check the three-digit security code on the back of cards for payments and wants all cardholders to join its authentication system Verified by Visa.

These measures as stated by Visa are aimed at providing higher level of protection against fraud to cardholders, merchants and financial institutions. The company claims they will serve to enhance protection against online fraud and crime committed as a result of lost, stolen and counterfeit cards or compromised sensitive data. The company plans to meet banks and merchants at the beginning of 2009 with a schedule to be elaborated for the implementation of its recommendations.