Fraud is an unfortunate aspect of doing business and a merchant will want to minimise its cost. Fraud problems will arise whether taking cash, cheques, cards or any other form of payment. For example, when being paid in cash, the note could be counterfeit, or a cheque could bounce due to it being counterfeit or the signature could have been forged.
Card payments are also open to misuse and fraud. Similar to cash or cheques a counterfeit copy of a card can be made and passed off as real and used by a person who claims to be the genuine cardholder. Alternatively, the card details could have been stolen to fraudulently pay for goods ordered online, by mail order or by telephone (sometimes referred to as a MOTO transaction).
This section provides details on the types of fraud, some tips on how to prevent both card present and card-not-present fraud, a basic explanation of what a chargeback is, together with details of some third-party suppliers who have products which could help a merchant to reduce card fraud.
For more detailed information about card fraud and its prevention please visit www.cardwatch.org.uk.
