New task force by ACTA, ATOQ & CATO cracks down on credit card fraud

The travel business is constantly exposed to the dangers of fraud; the next telephone call, the next email or the next online booking could easily cost agents and their business thousands of dollars. 

READ MORE: New joint task force formed to fight industry fraud

Fraud also continues to grow so it's important to remain vigilant at all times.

But, why is travel so often the focus of criminals?

It's a virtual product with a high value which is often distributed by travel agents who do not have sophisticated fraud prevention systems in place. 

Airfare: a hot ticket for con artists

Travel (airline tickets in particular) is consistently one of the top sources of fraud globally. According to the 2017 ATOQ/ACTA/CATO fraud survey, 78 per cent of fraud cases experienced by Canadian agents involved airline tickets.

The Association of Tour Operators of Quebec (ATOQ), the Association of Canadian Travel Agencies (ACTA) and the Canadian Association of Tour Operators (CATO) have made fraud prevention one of their top priorities. 

A common goal

The three associations work together to seek out solutions that will help reduce fraud costs amongst their members.

ATOQ, ACTA and CATO all share a common objective, which is to accelerate change towards a fully secure transaction environment for participants in the travel distribution network in Canada.

Why should travel agencies and tour operators absorb fraud costs? The three organizations take a position that feels that it should be the card issuers who assume the risk of fraud. 

ACTA, ATOQ, and CATO have recently formed the 3DS Task Force with the mandate to explore the integration into the workflow of the cardholder authentication tools which shift fraud liability back to the card issuers. All three organizations agree that positive changes will be coming in late 2019 and early 2020.

Cutting back on credit card fraud

Is credit card fraud a big problem in Canada? 

Yes!

According to the Canadian Bankers Association (CBA), losses in 2017 were almost $800,000,000. The CBA also states that there were 74.3 million Visas and MasterCards in Canadian wallets that were used to make more than $469 billion in purchases in 2017.

Card not present (CNP) fraud in Canada, which includes telephone, email and online sales, generated losses of just over $620,000,000 - about 78% of the total fraud in 2017.

Keep an eye out for the fraud prevention recommendations that ATOQ, ACTA and CATO will be sharing during March.

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