June 24, 2005

There has been good news on the fraud committed on UK, that have been used abroad, which has seen the lowest level of this type of crime, since 1999 with the hope that it will drop even further in the future.

The latest figures show that from a high of £138.4 million in the year 2001, a fall of almost 46 million was recorded this year, to £92.5 million that is the lowest on record for the last five years and has seen the overall percentage of foreign fraud drop to 18% of the total British credit card fraud of £505 million, which was recorded in 2004 and will drop even further when every country changes over to the Chip and Pin system.

So how was this improvement made? Well Apacs the banking body said that the improved figures were down to, better detection systems used in the fight against fraud, which have gone along way in detecting transactions that were unusual and attributed to sensing that the credit card in question was being used in a fraudulent manner.

Another source the banking industry used in the credit card fraud fight, was the Dedicated Cheque and Plastic Crime Unit, whom they sponsored to help buck the trend in credit card fraud and the crooks who are committing it.

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Overseas fraud could be more of a problem for the banks and credit card issuers, as lots of countries have still to get up to speed on the new Chip and Pin system that is now deployed in the UK. So this has led to many lenders to be on the look out for any transactions that are made abroad, which are unusual and are then blocked before payment is made. Another small precaution that the credit card issuers are also introducing, is to ask the customer to let them know when they are going abroad, this way if any transactions are trying to be passed, the credit card issuer will now if the customer is in this country or not, thus being able to cancel any transaction in the knowledge that the customer is not in the country that the transaction is being made.

As most of the European community has turned over to Chip and Pin, British customers going abroad on holiday or business, will come across the same system of credit card payment as they would at home, giving you a better feeling of your card being secure from card fraud and will mean that the chances of our being used abroad for fraudulent use by crooks, is also greatly reduced.

But is further a field that may still be the cause of you being targeted by the credit card crooks, these people are simply not going to go away and will seek out places that are not up to the same speed as at home, when it comes to credit card security.

With largest country in the world being one, the United States have so far refused to switch to the Chip and Pin system as they feel that the cost to switch out weighs the loses that they are currently seeing in credit card fraud, though this will rise as the crooks start to circle around the old metallic stripe system, that they are remaining loyal too.

Places such as Canada, who hope to have the Chip and Pin system up and running by the year 2007 and Japan are currently moving up the list that the crooks target for their ill gotten gains.