Barclaycard users face questioning

BARCLAYCARD users out shopping next weekend should not be surprised if they are stopped at the counter and questioned about their identity, writes Maria Scott.

The chances of being stopped will be greatly increased if they are away from home, or if they are buying designer clothes or portable electrical items.

From 1 April Barclays Bank will be operating a pounds 2m computerised fraud prevention system, known as Fraud 2000, which aims to identify suspicious card transactions in shops. The system will be confined to Barclaycard customers initially but the bank hopes to extend it to its Connect Visa debit cards.

Card-related fraud cost Barclays pounds 52m in 1992, pounds 31m of which involved Barclaycards. The average loss on a stolen credit card was pounds 703.

Fraud 2000 will monitor 100,000 purchases a day. These will be transactions that need special authorisation by retailers. Generally, only transactions above certain amounts - known as floor limits - need to be authorised and this may be done by telephone or automatically by a computer terminal at the counter.

The technology being used by Barclaycard will check whether the purchase being made is one that is commonly the subject of a fraudulent transaction. This information will be compared with the normal pattern of spending on the cardholder's account.

If the system indicates that the transaction may be suspicious, the retailer will be told to seek more information to establish that the cardholder is genuine. Meanwhile Barclaycard will try to contact the cardholder by telephone at home.

Barclaycard expects to identify 250 unusual transactions a day and to call the police about 20 times a day.

The system aims to spot possible misuse of cards before cardholders have necessarily realised they have lost them. Barclays says the system only takes a fifth of a second to decide if a purchase looks suspicious.

There is a hit list of items likely to spark a reaction from the computer. These are all small, portable things that fraudsters can use themselves or quickly sell. They include cigarettes and alcohol, designer clothes, expensive training shoes and small electrical goods.

Barclaycard says that staff who make telephone inquiries to establish the identity and whereabouts of cardholders are highly trained and discreet.