Fraudester - proof

From Yesterday

At this point the card issuing bank verifies identity of cardholder and forwards response to acquires. The acquires can then proceed with transaction authorization passing on Electronic Commerce Indicator (ECI) value with request message to inform that cardholder was successfully authenticated. The card issuer upon receiving request can verify payer authentication via ECI value and provide authorization of transaction.

Solutions Available

Global payment card associations, as well as Western and European state authorities have made it mandatory to introduce 3 - D Secure enabled Internet Payment Gateway infrastructure to accept Credit Card transactions. Non availability of such infrastructure adversely affects the local payment card industry as a whole. Firstly from an acquires’s perspective not being able to facilitate Payer Authentication and provide ECI value will result in transaction declines by overseas card issuers.

That means local acquirers will be unable to take payments from overseas cardholders. Furthermore any fraudster with stolen card details could initiate and successfully complete payment against an online purchase.

From an issuer’s perspective, cardholders are vulnerable as any unauthorized party with their credit card details can initiate and successfully complete transactions. Furthermore overseas merchants and acquirers may decline locally issued cards as they are not providing 3 - D Secure Payer Authentication facility. Sri Lanka has world class local talents to successfully design, develop and implement 3 - D Secure enabled Internet Payment Gateways at a fraction of the cost of a foreign solution and what we need is consensus and collective action of the key stakeholders other than the public.

(Viraj Mudalige is a Chartered Engineer whose name is synonymous in Secure Electronic Payments with his deep rooted and iconic involvements since the inception of the industry in Sri Lanka. Having developed internationally acclaimed software solutions and several national level ICT implementations he has been a regular resource person in the regional forums in Secure Electronic Payments. He is a member of the panel of experts appointed by President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Electronic Payments Policy and Detection of Frauds.)