Problems arise for Verified by Visa customers

vbvChoosing a site to cater for all you gaming needs takes into account a number of factors. More often than not you’ll be looking for a reputable site that offer the games you want to play. Wanting to bet on sports and being from the UK you’ll more often than not plump for one the older brands such as William Hill Online or Ladbrokes. The younger crowd, and fans of Ray Winstone, may go for bet365. The legions of people who like “Kicking Feline creatures” on Facebook open an account at Paddy Power.

Playing poker or betting would have been at the fore-front of your thinking when you opened an account at one of these sites. Payment verification, processing, and all the security that goes with it might not have been up there though. Suffering from extreme anxiety may affect if you care about this at all but if you were that anxious in the first place then it’s doubtful that you’d even set up an account.

Those of you who managed to override enough of that anxiety to open up an account with any of the sites out there will then have been asked for payment before you can play. The payment cleared and hey presto! You can gamble to your heart’s content. Bad news may be about to reach you if you used certain verification software when depositing money though.

Earlier this week a handful of people complained that when using Verified by Visa or MasterCard SecureCode they noticed money leaving their account when they hadn’t bought anything. Experts at no less than Cambridge University say that the systems encourage the user to enter confidential information on pages they can’t be sure are always genuine. Not exactly music to the ears 70 million of so cardholders that are registered with either of the two schemes.

What does it mean for the iGaming industry then?

A number of sites in all sectors of the industry use the verification software. Whether it be sports books or poker it’s likely that at some point you may well have come across either of the two systems. Many sites have successful implemented eWallets which give the user more security and gives the customers more confidence.

To gain a deeper understanding of the industry’s standpoint on this software we it’s interesting to look at the sites that do and don’t use the system. William Hill is one company who use the software and are happy with the way it works for them.

Tony Kenny from William Hill commented: “We use both and they operate really well for us giving us and our customers protection from fraud whilst also enabling our business to reduce charge backs.

“We’ve also adopted iovation ReputationManager 360 as part of our overall fraud prevention strategy. In the fight against increasingly sophisticated online fraud rings, we see device identification and device reputation becoming a standard, necessary part of our comprehensive defence against fraud.”

Spokesman for online sports book Sportingbet, George Hudson, added: “We take the risk of potential fraud in our business extremely seriously and have a team dedicated to minimise this risk. Our systems are PCI-DSS compliant. The risk from fraudsters regarding Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode are primarily a risk to the banking industry, not online gaming.”

Elsewhere, advertising the fact that the software is used on their site included companies such as Gala Coral and Jackpot Joy, whereas it wasn’t listed on the PKR, or Paddy Power sites. CalvinAyre.com contacted all of them for a comment on the verification system but at the time of publishing none had responded.

Thankfully the problem is not widespread as of yet but it doesn’t defend the fact that Visa have admonished responsibility when money has gone missing from customer’s accounts without their knowledge.

Visa’s advice is simple: go through your banks website to set a personal assurance message and everything will be fine.