Consumer lending has been a growth engine for the commercial banking industry for the past few years. In the last three years alone, consumer loan outstandings have grown 45% and now represent almost 54% of total loans. Along with all of the usual risks in lending, such as underwriting, debt service/repayment, and interest rate risk, consumer lending--especially credit card lending--presents additional challenges with regard to fraud. Moreover, statistics show that fraud in consumer lending continues to increase. For example, a survey report by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) estimated that identity theft losses over a 12-month period in 2002 and 2003 totaled $47.6 billion for businesses and $5 billion for consumers.

Merchants/Point-of-Sale

We at V Certify understand the need of the hour and are working with various banks towards preventing credit card frauds at the point-of-sale and thus ensuring that frauds are not as easy as they sound. Although many people still buy goods and services in the brick-and-mortar retail world. For In person retail transactions, merchants can do at least three things to prevent credit card fraud. They can ensure that the customer initiating the transaction is authorized to use the credit card by verifying the card user's signature. Unfortunately, many merchants are reluctant to be too aggressive in trying to verify a customer's identity because they fear damage to their reputation will result if a customer is falsely accused of credit card fraud.

It also is incumbent on merchants to implement and enforce measures that control access to card readers and customer information. Furthermore, merchants must have confidence in the honesty and integrity of their employees.

Our rigorous merchant vetting and merchant training programs have helped banks keep their fraud rate in control