Banks suspend dealings with dubious websites

As more people turn to the Net for sleaze, misuse of credit cards is on the rise, causing huge losses to several banks. This has led to various national and international banks to ban transactions on dubious websites.

Visa international alone has banned over 200 websites of dubious origin, which offer pornographic material, a highly placed officer of an international bank revealed. Sources revealed that through this over 21,000 member financial institutions affiliated to it worldwide, are restricted from doing any business with these websites.

This decision was taken following observations over a period. It was found that the porn sites randomly billed anyone who gave the credit card and pin number for age verification. The users refuted the claims of the banks that they had been surfing on websites offering pornographic material and refused to pay the dues. The banks found it extremely difficult to process the transactions.

The loopholes in the existing system was exploited by the customers who just laughed and got away. As there is no way to prove that the transactions were indeed conducted by a certain cardholder, the banks had no choice but to write off the amounts.

However, banks cannot afford to have customers denying payments for transactions made. Finally, it was decided to suspend the transactions with websites offering pornographic material, points out a bank official in?charge of fraud cases.

To remove the problem once and for all, Visa is now introducing the Global Authentication payment mechanism, which is a 3?D secure protocol. This system makes the card holders mandatory to punch not only his pin number but also a special login ID and a password while making an on?line transaction. This will enable banks to identify origin of transaction, leaving no scope for dispute of any

kind.