Online shoppers to face new anti-fraud checks from next month

By

Nigel TAYLOR

Published
Feb 14, 2022

Online retailers will soon have to adopt stricter customer authentication procedures. And new anti-fraud rules, which kick in on 14 March, could result in more 'card declined’ messages.

Indeed, buyers have already started seeing more requests to verify their ID as payments providers and retailers begin to adopt the new strong customer authentication (SCA) rules.

Under the changes, before a retailer can accept an electronic payment it will have to verify that the customer is who they claim to be. The measures are similar to those already faced by people logging into online banking.

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While most low-value retail purchases, amounting to £25 or less, will be unaffected with checks carried out in the background, shoppers buying more expensive items online could have to provide a password, a pin, or a one-time-passcode received via a text message or landline, or log into their banking app and approve the purchase. However, the new rules do not apply if consumers buy something over the phone.

The rules, which have been introduced by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), were supposed to come into force a year ago but were delayed to give retailers more time to adapt.

The new ruling will apply to debit and credit card purchases, and will have the biggest impact on those making what are deemed to be the riskiest purchases.

Expensive purchases, those that are unusual for a particular shopper, or those transacted on a previously unused device, are likely to prompt the extra security check.

Mastercard told The Guardian newspaper that it expects about 25% of online transactions to require some form of extra verification by the customer after 14 March, compared to around 1% previously.