That wooshing sound you heard was the near-miss of my actual point. :-)
Visa, Mastercard, American Express and probably all the others, have in-house programs for data retention, management, verification AND DESTRUCTION for customer data. These are based upon an industry wide standard.
If clearing houses and merchants do not meet those standards, all of these companies (Visa, Mastercard, American Express) can and do FINE those companies. Alas, rather than audit for potential breeches, those card companies merely assess fines post facto.
That the customer is protected financially, is mostly a side benefit of Federal Law - although some programs (such as Amex Gold Card) offer additional protections or benefits. Generally, however, it involves chargebacks, and the merchant eats the cost. The credit card processors and the credit card companies themselves don't absorb the cost of most frauds.
All of this put another way: those logo-holders and licensors MAKE MORE MONEY when there is fraud, than when there isn't. Despite all the various protection programs they seem to offer.
All of them do fraud control at the consumer and merchant level
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Date: 2007-01-25 03:39 pm (UTC)Visa, Mastercard, American Express and probably all the others, have in-house programs for data retention, management, verification AND DESTRUCTION for customer data. These are based upon an industry wide standard.
If clearing houses and merchants do not meet those standards, all of these companies (Visa, Mastercard, American Express) can and do FINE those companies. Alas, rather than audit for potential breeches, those card companies merely assess fines post facto.
That the customer is protected financially, is mostly a side benefit of Federal Law - although some programs (such as Amex Gold Card) offer additional protections or benefits. Generally, however, it involves chargebacks, and the merchant eats the cost. The credit card processors and the credit card companies themselves don't absorb the cost of most frauds.
All of this put another way: those logo-holders and licensors MAKE MORE MONEY when there is fraud, than when there isn't. Despite all the various protection programs they seem to offer.
All of them do fraud control at the consumer and merchant level