Let’s Accelerate Dealing with Card-Not-Present Fraud

We brought together more than 60 organisations at our accelerator event to jointly address card-not-present (CNP) fraud.

By Lucy Anderson, Head of Payments Innovation at AusPayNet - 22 February 2018 

Yesterday, in co-operation with the RBA, we hosted an accelerator event, with the aim of developing consensus on how Australia could combat card-not-present (CNP) fraud, and to agree the principles and implementation approach for a framework to do so. 

Card-not-present transactions are where card data is used without the physical card being involved, via phone, e-mail or internet. Our latest figures (for financial year 2017) show that CNP fraud represents more than 80% of all fraud on Australian cards.

Yesterday’s event brought together participants from card issuers, merchant acquirers, card schemes, payment gateways, payment service providers, merchants, regulators and other industry bodies: over 70 people from over 60 organisations.

The participants were put through their paces, with “tradeshows” – detailing our fraud statistics, how other jurisdictions have looked at this issue, technical solutions to the problem, and how merchants see this issue – and panels to ensure that all participants had the same base information.  They were then split into groups to:

• Determine the intent, success (and failure) criteria, targets and metrics for an industry framework to combat CNP fraud;
• Agree the guiding principles for such a framework;
• Work through detailed payment scenarios to test those guiding principles; and,
• Consider the monitoring, enforcement, communication and engagement aspects of implementing such a framework.

The energy, enthusiasm and engagement of the group was exceptional, as was their ability to collaborate and build consensus.  This resulted not only in good outcomes on the day but in a clear direction going forward, namely that:

• There is cross-industry commitment to building a framework within 3-6 months, and to the principles that should underpin that framework;
• We should draft that framework, using these principles and the group’s work on monitoring, enforcement, communication and engagement;
• We should involve all of yesterday’s participants (and in the case of industry bodies such as the Australian Retailers Association and the NORA Network, their members) in reviewing and finalising that draft.

We look forward to working with the wider industry on taking this forward; doing so is a key priority for us in 2018.