KUALA LUMPUR: Although the usage of electronic payment in Malaysia is still low compared with developed countries, it is nonetheless a “fast mover” when responding to online fraud, MasterCard International vice-president for operations and advanced payment products (South-East Asia) David Chan said.


He said Malaysia was among the first countries in the world to migrate to EMV (Europay-MasterCard-Visa) cards in an effort to combat credit card fraud.

“Realising that online fraud can cause huge losses, banks in Malaysia are moving fast to equip themselves with more secure anti-fraud codes and devices.

“The rate of adoption by local banks is fast, judging from its size if compared with developed countries,” he told StarBiz after presenting his paper entitled “Banking Technologies and Cost Effectiveness: Migration to Electronic Payment” yesterday.

He added that online authentication was essential for sustaining continued online payments and banking growth.

Chan said online payments globally currently accounted about 10% of the total US$5tril plus e-payments business. He attributed this enormous figure to the rising e-commerce business worldwide.

He said although online fraud was 20 times higher than total card fraud in the US, nevertheless it had declined with the usage of more secure online fraud codes and devices.

Source : The Star