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Consumers looking to be their own fraud protection advocates

Nearly two-thirds of American consumers say they would use a service that sends them an email or text when suspicious activity occurs on their payment card.

April 16, 2015 by Terry Dooley — SVP & CIO, ITS, Inc

Costly data breaches over the past 18 months have left scores of consumers worried about the safety of their payment card information. In fact, a recent FICO survey found that 70 percent of U.S. consumers are concerned about payment fraud.

The survey polled consumers in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. Interestingly, while 70 percent of Americans, 75 percent of Canadians and 66 percent of consumers in the U.K. were concerned about fraud, their number one anxiety wasn’t the fear of losing money. Rather, the hassle of contacting their financial institution, cancelling cards and cutting through the red tape won out as their primary worries.

In the U.S., 68 percent of respondents named the time factor as their biggest payment card concern. In Canada, 60 percent cited time and hassle as their primary worry, and 51 percent in the U.K. said the same.

When asked if they were interested in ways to manage the security of their payment methods themselves, more than half of survey respondents said they would use a mobile app to help secure their payment information.

More than 50 percent of consumers in all three countries said an app controlling allowable transaction types on their credit and debit cards and a maximum allowable dollar amount for those transactions would be of interest. Such apps let users control whether a card can be used in-store, online, over the phone or for mail orders.

Notifications through apps like are another way for people to take payment security into their own hands. Sixty-three percent of American consumers said they would use a service that sent them emails or text messages when suspicious activity occurred on their payment card. Fifty-one percent of Canadians and 46 percent of consumers in the U.K. were interested in getting these alerts.

Consumers want and expect increased payment card security in this frequent data-breach environment. FIs can take advantage of this unprecedented consumer interest and willingness to take an active role in their own payment card security.

Providing consumer education, as well as offering fraud protection tools such as a fraud scoring product and and a mobile app that alerts card holders directly to potentially fraudulent activity on their accounts, is a great place to start. Arming consumers with these valuable fraud prevention tools can empower them to take a proactive approach to preventing payment card fraud.

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