MasterCard Ups Cardholder Security with Expanded Fraud Policies (May 29, 2014)
MasterCard is beefing up its cardholder security efforts, adding identity theft resolution assistance to all of its credit, debit, prepaid and small business cards issued in the U.S. The program assists cardholders in canceling lost or stolen cards and alerting credit reporting agencies, as well as detecting whether stolen personal or financial data has popped up online. MasterCard also is extending its zero liability policy in the U.S. to cover all MasterCard-branded PIN-based and ATM transactions; the policy previously applied only to signature debit and credit transactions. The identity theft coverage extension begins in July, while the zero liability extension takes effect in October.
“The changes that we’re making in cardholder protection, combined with our efforts to move the U.S. payments industry to EMV chip technology, will help deliver safer shopping experiences to consumers,” said Chris McWilton, president, North American markets, MasterCard. The network has been among the leading drivers of the switch to EMV-based payment cards, setting a liability shift date of October 2015, after which the liability for fraudulent transactions will fall upon the transactional party with the lowest level of available security features.
But with the EMV liability shift more than a year away—and EMV ubiquity likely even further out—cardholders can only benefit from additional layers of security, a point driven home by the recent high-profile data breaches at major retailers.
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