Getting a credit card can be essential to help you make those larger purchases, build up your credit score to help you take out a loan in the future and get you out of financial trouble. As online payments have advanced alongside contactless cards though, so have fears about protecting credit cards from fraud and theft online and in the digital world. Thankfully technology always manages to come up with a solution and there are now many credit card protection technologies in use. These are some of the best new options to consider using to keep your credit card safe.
RFID Blocking Wallets
The introduction of contactless credit cards has been a revelation for many people, meaning for amounts under £30 spent on food, drinks, clothes and anything else can be paid for with a quick tap of your card. This has introduced two main security issues though.
Firstly, it means if a contactless credit card is stolen it can be used without the PIN for making purchases under £30 until you inform the bank. Secondly, criminals started using technology to read the signal from contactless cards and steal the information to use for online payments. RFID blocking wallets are designed to prevent this being skimmed by thieves and the details stolen and they can cost as little as £6.
Data Analytics
Online verification is another big area when it comes to payment security and requires a joint effort between the business, card networks and issuers. More and more are using layered approaches and all the information available to them to identify suspicious purchases.
This involves a large data analysis that takes into account the card information alongside IP address, location, shipping address and purchase history. Some are even more sophisticated and can use previous information about shipping addresses to locations known for fraudulent activity to prevent them going through. The use of such data can stop a lot of money being stolen.
Dynamic CVV
Most people are aware of the CVV (those three numbers on the back of your card) that can be vitally important for card verification. However, these can easily be used for theft and fraudulent activity.
For this reason, a number of companies are developing ways to make the CVV more dynamic, so that it displays a security code that changes at specific intervals. It will mean the customer needs to have the card at the time of paying both online and offline, as otherwise the card information may be incorrect.
Tokenisation
This is a new approach that involves credit card numbers being replaced with a stand-in code of numbers and letters that payment processors can only decipher to link to a certain account or transaction. These are less vulnerable to theft, which makes purchases a lot more secure.
Companies can prompt consumers to enter a one-time code for online purchases rather than their more vulnerable card information. Card information will be harder to hack as more companies store these tokens in their databases too.
These are just some of the top technologies being developed to improve credit card payment protection, with more on the way.
