Security

Security comes inclusive with Interac services

While Interac Association works together with members, stakeholders and top fraud experts to maintain the security of the Interac services, you can also play a role in protecting your customers.

Protect your customers against debit card fraud

Here's how:

• If a customer has a chip card and your terminal is chip capable, remind your customer to insert the card. Avoiding an unnecessary swipe of the card will reduce the potential of your customer’s card information being skimmed.
• Treat your PIN pads like cash. Keep PIN pads out-of-sight when not in use.
• Check your PIN pads and Automated Banking Machines (ABMs) regularly for anything unusual.
• Lock-up PIN pads at closing.
• Include log-in sheets for accountability of PIN pad in cash open and close procedures.
• Consider adding surveillance cameras.
• Know your employees - exercise due diligence when hiring and check references.
• Remind your customers to protect their PIN when entering it at every opportunity, and if they are inserting a chip card, remind them to take their card when the transaction is complete.
• Talk to your payment service provider about other steps you can take to prevent fraud from happening at your location.

What is Interac Association doing to protect merchants and their customers?

Chip Technology

Interac Association is transitioning to chip technology, a new generation of payment card technology that will put the power of a computer onto the card.

Microchips will be embedded into debit cards, providing increased protection against debit card fraud. The first Interac chip transactions are currently taking place in Kitchener-Waterloo as part of a market trial in collaboration with the major credit card companies.

See chip for more information.

Monitoring and detection

Interac Association’s members have technology in place to monitor unusual activity and prevent debit card fraud. Interac Association works closely with fraud experts, business partners and law enforcement to monitor unusual activity and take immediate steps to protect cardholders.

Education and Awareness

Interac Association plays an active role in raising public awareness about the importance of debit card protection and works closely with law enforcement and other partners to implement fraud prevention and education programs.

See Project Protect, a collaborative initiative focused on educating merchants about how they can help prevent payment card fraud or Merchant Incentive Program for more information

For more information and answers review our Frequently Asked Questions

Remind customers to insert their chip card throughout the chip transition

In an effort to combat debit card skimming and the production of counterfeit cards, Interac Association is transitioning to a new generation of payment card technology, known as chip. Chip technology provides the card with processing power, allowing the card and the terminal to communicate and carry out additional security checks to ensure the card is valid. The full security of a chip transaction is achieved when a chip debit card is inserted into a chip-capable terminal.

Chip debit cards and chip capable ABMs and store terminals are already entering the marketplace; however, given the vast number of debit cards and terminals across Canada that must be upgraded, the transition will not be completed until 2015. During the transition, some magnetic stripe transactions will still continue to take place.

As a result, your customers' magnetic stripes can still be skimmed at terminals that have not been upgraded to chip technology, even if customers have chip cards, so it is important to continue to practice device security and remind your customers to shield their PINs.

Furthermore, if you have a chip terminal, remind chip cardholders to insert their cards first. By inserting first, they avoid an unnecessary swipe of their card and reduce the potential of their magnetic stripes being skimmed.

Throughout the transition, financial institutions will continue to aggressively monitor unusual transaction patterns and prevent fraud before it happens, as they do today. Because debit transactions are guaranteed, liability shift is not applicable in the Interac services; however, if you do not transition to chip technology by the 2015 deadline, you will not be able to process debit transactions.