Sri Lanka records lowest online fraud rates in Asia Pacific
Sri Lanka records one of the lowest fraud rates in the Asia Pacific region and worldwide in terms of making payments online, a top official at Visa International said this week. Visa Regional Risk Officer for Asia Pacific Joe Cunningham in an exclusive interview with the Sunday Times said that Sri Lanka was found to have one of the lowest fraud rates in Asia Pacific.
In this respect, he noted that this indicates that Visa’s clients in Sri Lanka take security seriously. He made these observations when he arrived in the country to launch Visa’s series of protection measures to ensure the safety of making payments online more secure and customised to suit Sri Lankan consumers through its three year ‘ Roadmap on Payment Security’.
Launching the Visa Future of Security Roadmap, he noted that this was meant to secure the ecommerce transactions to ensure Sri Lankan consumers and businesses were protected from breaches of any kind.
In Sri Lanka the job is not that difficult since clients take security extremely strictly and the country holds the lowest fraud rates in Asia Pacific and worldwide, Mr. Cunningham said.
It’s a plan that is the implementation of the global payment security strategy developed collaboratively with Visa’s clients and customised for Sri Lankans, he said.
The intention is to update the roadmap annually and add elements to this as they go on and it would be a 2-3 year plan with many aspects of the security plan built on global standards, Mr. Cunningham.
In 2019 security roadmaps were launched in a number of countries but yet to roll it out in India, he noted.
The roadmap also offers tools and plans to ensure convenience and security when transacting online with the adoption of Data Security Standards (DSS), authentication, biometrics.
Visa Country Manager for Sri Lanka and the Maldives Anthony Watson said that they had observed certain trends in more consumers shifting towards online purchases.
Some of the patterns observed over the past three years indicated that there has been a threefold shift towards online e-commerce both domestically and internationally, he said.
In fact, he pointed out that consumers were more technology savvy and more educated on obtaining a secure transaction online.
Some of the tools incorporated in the roadmap include Data Security Standards ( DSS), authentication, biometrics and others like EMV chip card system and 3D Secure 2.0 that would support tokens.
The core areas addressed in online transactions through the launch of this new roadmap is devaluing the data by removing sensitive payment data from the ecosystem and making stolen account details useless.
In addition, protecting data by implementing safeguards to protect personal data as well as account details; harness the data by identifying potential fraud before it occurs and increase confidence in approving good transactions; and empower everyone by including accountholders and merchants, to play an active role in security payments.