In
order to combat more effectively bank card fraud,
the European Commission published on 2 March
2005 new guidelines for the collection and processing
of data on merchants guilty of irregularities.
As a result, the names of merchants suspected
of fraud and whose account has been closed by
their bank could be recorded in a database shared
with other financial institutions. Visa and
MasterCard have already launched a joint database
which can be accessed by banks.
The latter are also working on the development
of a Pan-European database. The cost of setting
up such a database would be covered by the savings
achieved by preventing fraud; those savings
are estimated at 200 million euros.
