Crooks target US retailers slow to adopt chip cards

Washington

THE slow transition to chip credit cards by US retailers hasn't gone unnoticed by criminals.

Counterfeit-card fraud will rise to US$4.5 billion in 2016, up 12.5 per cent from last year, as crooks ramp up their thievery before all merchants and banks have moved to accept the more secure chip technology, said Julie Conroy, an analyst at financial-industry researcher Aite Group. The theft is especially hurting retailers that hadn't equipped their stores to accept chip cards by Oct 1, when banks stopped footing the bill for fraud committed at non-compliant locations. "There's a fire sale, to try to burn through all of the stock of card data that they've seen," Ms Conroy said.