An industry organization stated that since the Covid-19 pandemic began in early 2020, the credit card fraud rate in the Philippines has soared by 21%. This is because more and more people resort to online shopping under repeated lockdowns across the country, as they are forced to change their payment behavior to avoid face-to-face transactions. The Credit Card Association of the Philippines (CCAP), the umbrella organization of 18 major credit card companies in the country, stated in a statement on January 6 that the industry “has been experiencing a large number of fraud cases leading to financial losses” and many incidents have occurred . Involving scammers to gain access…
An industry organization stated that since the Covid-19 pandemic began in early 2020, the credit card fraud rate in the Philippines has soared by 21%. This is because more and more people resort to online shopping under repeated lockdowns across the country, as they are forced to change their payment behavior to avoid face-to-face transactions.
The Credit Card Association of the Philippines (CCAP), the umbrella organization of 18 major credit card companies in the country, stated in a statement on January 6 that the industry “has been experiencing a large number of fraud cases leading to financial losses” and many incidents have occurred . It involves scammers obtaining one-time passwords to conduct online transactions.
“The perpetrators used various digital payment platforms to commit fraud,” said Alex Ilagan, executive director of CCAP.
CCAP stated that the “virtual account takeover” scam has the largest number of incidents. This is a scam that involves taking over and accessing a customer’s one-time password (OTP), allowing criminals to perform OTP-verified online transactions.
Call for stricter regulations on telecommunications companies
The organization called on regulators and telecommunications companies to tighten rules when providing or changing mobile phone numbers to customers and establish a procedure to report numbers used to defraud people.
The credit card organization stated that “there is no existing law to protect consumers from this type of attack by fraudsters,” adding that it supports a bill that requires people to register their Philippine SIM cards.
CCAP further urges the country’s telecommunications companies to strengthen their existing “understandings” when accepting new prepaid and postpaid customers, especially during the identity verification process, when customers request to change their mobile phone numbers to declare that their mobile devices are lost or stolen. Your customer” process.
