Discover becomes the top credit card in terms of fraud protection

This is an age when debit and credit cards are being used extensively in all places instead of cash by a large number of customers. However, this leads to a new situation where a lot of cases related to fraud arise and there have been many stories of identity theft. One of the greatest benefits of credit cards though is the zero liability which is offered by many lenders wherein the credit card holder can refuse to pay the amounts that are suspicious and are likely to have been cases of fraud. Although this augurs well for the credit card customers, it is not very good news for the credit card companies themselves which have been paying for such cases. However, each of the credit card companies is coming up with their own strategies to counter this situation.

In the recent times, Discover Financial Services has been named as the leader in the industry for reducing the number of incidents of fraud. As many as 26 credit card issuers have been part of the survey conducted by the Javelin Strategy and Research, which concluded that Discover Financial services has outperformed all the other card issuers in reducing identity fraud. The results of the latest project were released by the Javelin Strategy and Research, called as the 2010 Annual Identity Protection Services Scorecard: Market Challenges, Consolidations and the Move towards Whole Identity.

The purpose of this report was to identify the level of expertise that each of the credit card issuers have when it comes to tackling identity fraud. 26 companies were examined by the survey in areas that comprise of detection, resolution and prevention of fraud. This is based on research conducted by the survey from customer services calls as well as the websites.

This survey shows the growing importance of fraud detection and resolution. It also shows that fraud prevention is a major aspect being focused upon by the debit and credit card companies. This is because over the past few years credit card companies have lost billions of dollars due to credit card frauds. In fact card fraud has become the fastest growing crime in the country and across the world. Therefore the credit card issuers have stepped up efforts to fight against this fraud and reduce losses along with protecting the customer from identity theft. The ultimate consumer also pays the price of fraud through additional fees and prices although the liability itself is 0%.

Doug Nicholas

Doug Nicholas, a financial consultant by profession with a Masters degree in International Business from Brown University, is also an ardent writer. Though he has a full time job at one of the companies listed on Wall Street, he does manage to squeeze in time to follow his passion. He puts his ideas to words in his articles related to finance and business.