Customers who are traveling may soon find it easier to charge their purchases with this added layer of protection.
When Visa customers travel to another country, a new mobile security feature from the credit card issuer may make it easier for them to be able to prevent fraudulent charges or having to overcome the automatic protection barriers that the bank may implement when trying to make a purchase.
The strategy is meant to make it easier, safer, and more convenient for Visa customers to shop abroad.
Travelers currently need to call their banks to tell them that they will be traveling, and where, or they risk having their cards frozen from the first moment that they are used in a foreign country. Visa is hoping to be able to prevent both of those occurrences from being required by using mobile security to be able to track the customer’s location and know that he or she is the one who is using the credit card when it is swiped at any terminal in the world.
The mobile security service uses geolocation technology to verify the customer’s position when a card is swiped.
This method of using the location of the mobile device makes it less likely that a bank will be required to mistakenly decline a transaction that looks suspicious but that is actually legitimate. The company is working its mobile security feature into a module. This way, banks can incorporate it into their own mobile banking apps. Then, when a customer travels and tries to use the card, a partner of Visa, Finsphere – a geospacial analytics company – pings the app in order to be able to locate the customer’s device. That finding is then reported to Visa to see if it is a match.