Study shows credit cards more secure than store cards
Regular readers may know that IndexCreditCards.com isn’t a big fan of store cards. True, they can work well for some people, but a huge number of consumers end up paying very high interest rates for very few worthwhile benefits. Now a January report from Javelin Strategy & Research, an independent company that provides insights into customer transactions, suggests there’s a new reason to dislike store cards: they tend to be way less secure than mainstream credit cards.
Credit cards better
Maybe this shouldn’t come as a surprise, but, on average, retailers simply aren’t as good at preventing and resolving fraud issues as financial institutions, according to the report. This used a scorecard system to measure different card issuers across three fraud-related criteria:
- Prevention
- Detection
- Resolution
“Retailers, common targets for data breach crimes, scored lowest in prevention and among the lowest overall,” Al Pascual, Javelin’s senior industry analyst for security, risk and fraud, said in a written statement.
The three retailers reviewed in this study placed lowest in prevention, with Cabela’s WFB at 29 percent, Target at 22 percent and Nordstrom at 18 percent.
Credit card companies on top
For the seventh year in a row, Bank of America topped the annual Javelin league table for best overall security. USAA came first for prevention, while Associated Bank and SunTrust shared the honors for best fraud detection. Other big credit card companies that did particularly well include Citi and Wells Fargo.
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