Ralf Ohlhausen

Before the birth of the credit card and advent of online shopping, transaction fraud was rare. Fast forward to today and “plastic fraud” is rife and moreover expected by merchants, many of whom skip straight to damage limitation rather than trying to fight it. As the most popular payment method after cash, fraud figures involving credit cards have skyrocketed since the e-commerce boom of the 1990’s with fraud losses from UK-issued cards in 2014 alone, amounting to £479 million. “Card-not-present” transactions have made it all too easy for fraudsters to bypass crucial, physical control mechanisms including a signature, photo comparisons,…