Credit-Card Thieves Move Online as Chips Thwart In-Store Fraud
- Use of stolen card data rose 40 percent last year, report says
- Retailers spending billions to protect e-commerce sites
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The adoption of credit-card chip technology by U.S. retailers is having an unintended consequence: Criminals are moving from brick-and-mortar stores to the internet.
The use of stolen card data to pay for merchandise on websites, in mobile apps and by dialing call centers surged 40 percent last year, according to a report from Javelin Strategy & Research released Wednesday. That’s forcing merchants to spend billions on online fraud protection in an effort to detect when a crook is using someone else’s card number.