According to a new report from Gemini Advisory, at least 60 million payment cards – debit and credit cards – were compromised in the U.S. last year. This includes EMV or “chip” cards that were designed to prevent payment card compromises.
However, the chip does nothing to protect against online or telephone “card not present” payments. Also, the chip can be removed off a legitimate card and affixed to another card. While card issuers tend to protect users against illegitimate charges, someone’s bank account can be drained before a debit card compromise is stopped, with several days or weeks before the money can be restored.
Payment Card Compromises
Citing the increasing security problems from traditional credit and debit cards, including chip cards, SmartMetric, Inc. announced the creation of a biometric credit card that is turned on by the card holders’ fingerprint.
The company holds five issued patents pertaining to its biometric credit/debit card, which is currently being offered to financial institutions in the United States and Latin America and will soon to be offered to European financial institutions.
The thin SmartMetric biometric card includes a fully functional fingerprint scanner built inside the card along with a rechargeable battery that allows the card to be used on all card readers, including ATMs, the company said.
“Of [the 60 million cards compromised], 75% or 45.8 million were [card present] records, likely compromised through card-sniffing and point-of-sale (POS) breaches of businesses such as Saks, Lord & Taylor, Jason’s Deli, Cheddar’s Scratch Kitchen, Forever 21, and Whole Foods. To break it down even further, 90% or 41.6 million of those records were EMV chip-enabled,” said SmartMetric’s president and CEO, Chaya Handrick, in a prepared statement.