The rate of online card fraud is rising sharply as a growing number of purchases take place on the Internet while brick-and-mortar merchants race to lock down vulnerabilities in the checkout line, the Wall Street Journal reported today. This is prompting new steps to try to curb the threat: The credit card industry is expected to announce a plan to encourage online merchants to provide card issuers with more detailed customer information that could be used to catch fraudulent purchases. More than 7.5 percent of online merchants’ revenue is eaten up by the cost of actual fraud and costs that are associated with fraud-prevention tools, according to a survey to be released today by Javelin Strategy & Research, a consulting firm that specializes in the payments industry. Aite Group LLC, another consulting firm, estimated in May that so-called card-not-present fraud will rise to $4 billion this year from $3.2 billion in 2015. It expects that figure to jump to $7.2 billion in 2020.
