Credit card theft

Here I go again, on credit card theft. This time, it’s been more severe than one can imagine. Mastercard has acknowledge theft of some 40 million (No, that was NOT a typo) credit card information here. They claim it was not an accident, but a planned and sophisticated attack . More information here.
With all this credit card thefts being more and more rampant these days, I wonder when will everyone migrate to EMV or some smart card based solution. Card theft has been at its best in Malaysia & Thailand. I was told that if you swipe your card in one of the South-East Asian coutries, board a flight and get back home (to where-ever that is), your card would have been maxed out by that time. A lot of issuers, like American Express, used to replace your card if you’d travelled to those contries. I am not sure if they still do it. I guess they have adopted a smart-card based solution making it literally impossible to forge the cards. (Well, not exactly impossible, but the price you pay to forge it is just not worth it!) Now, it has spread to India (not smart-card based solution, but forgery of credit cards). India was asked to migrate to EMV by December 2005, and from the looks of it, I don’t see it happening. So much for money on credit.
And one more interesting fact would be the liability in case of a forged/lost/stolen card. A friend lost a card recently, and was held liable for all the purchases that the guy who stole the card made. Last months Reader’s Digest had an article about this. It seems that Am-Ex charges the customer only Rs. 1000/- for a lost card, irrespective of the amount of purchases the thief has made. There is one other issuer (whose name I can’t recollect at the moment) who charges Rs. 20,000/- for a lost card. There are a whole lot of banks that make the customer settle the entire amount. Seems like there is an organization called Consumer Association of India, who say that you don’t have to pay a single dime in case anyone asks you to do so. My friend went a step further and got the addresses of the shops where the purchases were made, and convinced the shopkeeper to show him the receipts. He even has a copy of them. The signatures don’t match. The bank says they have already settled the bill for the merchant and that he (my friend) has to pay up. Well, I haven’t talked to him after I heard that. I admit that losing your card is pretty stupid, but then again, isn’t the merchant supposed to check whether the signature on the card and the receipt match before handing over the card back to the customer? In case of photo cards, there have been instances of men using women’s card and getting away with it. Where did all that security and the extra money I paid to get my photo on the card go??!! I wonder..