August 20th, 2008
Visa, banks to test real-time fraud alerts
Credit card giant Visa is teaming up with with eight North American banks to deliver fraud alerts in real-time via SMS (text messages) and e-mails to cell phones.
The pilot program will allow about 2,000 Visa cardholders to set thresholds that will trigger an immediate transaction alert to a mobile device. Once an alert is received, a cardholders can verify the transaction details, and if the transaction appears to be irregular, can immediately contact their bank to help stop further transactions on the card.
Alert types included in the pilot include:
- cash withdrawal from an ATM machine;
- a transaction initiated cross border;
- an Internet or telephone transaction and
- a transaction that exceeds an amount that has been chosen by the cardholder.
The eight North American financial institutions participating in the trial are PNC Bank, SunTrust Bank, U.S. Bank, Wachovia, Wells Fargo, Royal Bank of Canada, TD Bank Financial Group and Vancity in Canada.
* Image source: orphanjones’ Flickr photostream (Creative Commons 2.0)
Ryan Naraine is a journalist and security evangelist at Kaspersky Lab. He manages Threatpost.com, a security news portal. Here is Ryan's full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
For daily updates on Ryan's activities, follow him on Twitter.
Subscribe to Zero Day via Email alerts or RSS.
