Chip cards are deterring fraud

Visa is looking at how chip cards are impacting fraud. CU Today is reporting that Visa found a dip of more than 18 percent on fraudulent transactions. What Visa is also finding is that mag strip devices are seeing more fraud activity since chip cards came on the market.

CU Today writes that, “Among the 25 merchants that were suffering the most instances of counterfeit fraud at the end of 2014, five that began processing credit and debit cards equipped with EMV terminals saw those infractions fall 18.3 percent as of the final quarter of 2015, Stephanie Ericksen, vice president of risk products at Visa, told USA Today. Meanwhile, five of those merchants not yet equipped to handle chip-enabled cards saw an increase in fraudulent transactions of 11.4 percent.”

On the MasterCard side, as of March, 70 percent of its consumer credit cards were chip equipped, which is 50 percent higher since October of last year. But analysts believe the U.S. is behind expectations from last year.

Some fraud analysts also believe hackers are moving more of their attention to online purchases as their tools are much more sophisticated today.