MasterCard Exec: Hackers To Target Banks As EMV Gains Traction

As the United States moves away from the traditional magnetic stripe card to embrace the chip-and-PIN model, one casualty could be banks, which could see a growing number of breaches as criminals target new avenues for fraud, MarketWatch reported Friday (July 17), quoting a MasterCard executive.

As has been widely reported across a variety of media, the financial industry is facing a looming deadline this autumn as the payments industry must adopt chip-enabled cards and payment terminals, and, of course, the liability shift ties in as well.

As the U.S. remains the last of the developed nations to adopt this (less than) new technology, the nation remains the center of about half the card fraud seen globally, according to MarketWatch. That means new avenues of fraud will attract cyberthieves as traditional streams are cut off.

In an interview with the site, Johan Gerber, who is the senior vice president of processing products at MasterCard, said, “That’s my fear: That criminals are going to try to find other ways to get their money. Breaches of financial institutions is one of them. We definitely see a steady increase, a couple of them every year, and that is concerning.”

Only a minority of merchants are ready to handle the transition to EMV, despite the fact that a majority of terminals are similarly equipped to handle chip-and-PIN. Several obstacles still are in place, including timely training of staff, according to the Mercator Group, a research firm.

MarketWatch notes that the new cards may be hard to counterfeit but may not be able to offer defenses against fraud through online transactions. That is the fraud that is expected to grow even as EMV gains transactions.

Gerber told the financial news site that MasterCard is working with banks to boost security and uncover reporting “anomalies big and small — both when criminals attempt to remove millions of dollars from an account, and when ‘all of a sudden, I see 2,000 cards transacting in a space where I’ve never seen them before for small accounts.’”

MasterCard said it is is exploring pathways to authenticate online transactions and to confirm cardholder identities. Among the options, according to MarketWatch: Selfies. Another option is a bracelet that tracks the specific rhythm of a user’s heartbeat.

“There’s not going to be a single silver bullet,” Gerber says. “Criminals are going to try to find other ways to get their money.”

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