Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Bank Fraud Detection Through SMS

Great idea. Now what happens if your cellphone is stolen and NFC is the norm then?

From PC Advisor MasterCard offers SMS to detect credit card fraud.

If you've ever had a credit card purchase mysteriously rejected only to discover later that the bank thought you were a fraudulent user, you may appreciate an effort by MasterCard to use SMS (short message service) to streamline the process of clearing up card-usage questions.

MasterCard has joined with mBlox, a mobile messaging infrastructure specialist, to add an SMS option to its Aristion fraud detection system and is making Aristion Communicator available to banks.

SMS fraud alert systems are already being used in parts of Eastern Europe and in South Africa by individual banks, but MasterCard believes it is the first credit card company to offer an SMS fraud detection and alerting system on a worldwide basis. MasterCard has spent the last 12 months developing and testing the SMS service, Gerber said, but the company declined to provide any users outside of MasterCard to recount their experiences.

The quicker the detection of unusual behavior, the cheaper for everybody. How about designating a pre set limit ($200, 500, 1000) so if your card is used by more than that amount in a certain period youre notified. Lots of options.

Does the bank make the credit card owner pay for this service?

Banks should pick up this tab.

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