Clearsale Blog | Insights on Ecommerce and fraud

'Card testing' is e-commerce's next big security challenge

Written by Rafael Lourenco | Sep 18, 2017

Nobody opens an online store hoping to spend time and energy combating fraud. However, fraud prevention is a key to e-commerce success, because fraudsters are targeting online shops in growing numbers.

Forbes recently reported e-commerce fraud was up 30% in the first 4 months of 2017 over the same period in 2016. One specific type of fraud, card testing, was up by 200%. Card testing is common, not always easy to spot, and dangerous for the small online sellers that fraudsters often target for this type of scam. Here's what small and medium e-retailers need to know about card testing.

We compare card testing to thieves “playing the slots” with stolen card numbers to see what they can get from them. Fraudsters test stolen credit card numbers with small, incremental online purchases to see if their stolen card numbers are valid, to match the numbers to their card verification values (which fraudsters often can't obtain along with the card number), and to try to get an idea of what the card's credit limit and purchasing power may be. 

 

 

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