Payments fraud expert Tom Wills has spoken of the increasingly sophisticated prepaid card fraud he has been seeing in recent years. He claimed that while there has always been high fraud with prepaid cards, back-office systems are now being exploited, causing even greater harm.
Wills also suggested that re-loadable cards are more vulnerable these days, with the Royal Bank of Scotland breach in 2008 being a prime example. (RBS WorldPay were hacked, revealing account information for 1.5 million card holders.)
More recently, JPMorgan Chase and Co. revealed that hackers had accessed their system and exposed the information of 465,000 prepaid card customers.
According to Bank Info Security, new moves by hackers are seeing them break into card management platforms, stealing numbers and then getting access to PINs. From there they can create fake cards and withdraw money from ATMs.
According to Wills, between 50-80% of attacks on card management platforms are aided by an insider. This frightening statistic is often overlooked unfortunately, and Wills is pleading with banks to take greater care and tighten security.
