Consumers step up vigil to combat card fraud: Survey

A study by Visa, a global payment technology company, found out that Indian consumers adopt safe payment practices such as changing password, personal identification number (PIN) at regular intervals, to avoid any kind of payment fraud.

“Indian shoppers try to be secure of any fraud with safe payment practices and believe they have a role to play in keeping the payment environment secure,” the Visa Asia-Pacific payment card security study said.

Last year, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had mandated banks to deploy two-factor authentication by August 1, 2009 to provide better security for online transactions.

The study found out that the most popular prevention measure used by Indians in the last 12 months to keep fraud at bay was changing passwords or PINs regularly.

“Payment security is a shared responsibility and our survey shows that many Indian consumers are taking the lead in fraud prevention. We also applaud the Indian payment industry for encouraging them to protect their online dealings,” said Uttam Nayak, country manager, South Asia, Visa. The study said that though overall consumers felt primarily responsible for preventing fraud, they also thought companies that process the transactions as well as consumers were the most at fault when fraud occurs followed by merchants and retailers, and law enforcement agencies.

People said password hacking, ATM skimming and identity theft via stolen personal items were their top three concerns.