‘Verified by Visa’ and similar schemes grow in popularity

[img_assist|nid=8233|title=|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=100|height=43]As of today more than 25 million credit and debit cards were registered with the secure online payment systems ‘Verified by Visa’ and ‘MasterCard SecureCode’. The figure reflects the increase of nearly 600% within the last two years.

With these voluntary systems customers are provided with an additional layer of protection as they request a pass secure code from users before proceeding the transaction. There is also the version of Halifax known as Halifax Secure.

APACS, the UK payments association reports that every month holders of over 1.5 million cards subscribe to one of the schemes.

The trend is explained by the increase in online card fraud. Losses from “card-not-present” fraud in 2008 made up for £290.5 million as compared to the previous year when the same figure was £223.8 million.