Re:How I discovered the underground world of credit card net...
by lxgr on Thursday August 03, 2023 @11:03AM
(#36986906)
> that’s the peace of mind benefit I see: those businesses can slack on security without me getting stuck with a potentially massive bill.
That's a false dichotomy, though: Regulators can mandate merchants and issuers to make fraud less likely without allowing the liability for any remaining fraud to be pushed onto cardholders.
Re:How I discovered the underground world of credit card net...
by acdha on Thursday August 03, 2023 @11:21AM
(#36987136)
That doesn’t make it a false dichotomy. We have an existing regulatory model which absolves consumers of most fraud risk, and many people like that.
Re:How I discovered the underground world of credit card net...
by lxgr on Thursday August 03, 2023 @11:28AM
(#36987224)
Sure, and maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but your point is that changing that model might make things worse for consumers by pushing more liability onto them, right?
I'm just saying that this isn't necessarily a consequence of improving fraud rates, although it's definitely important to keep an eye on issuers – I've heard about attempts to use it as an opportunity to limit liability in the past.
Exactly: it’s not like this was a technological breakthrough but that companies were trying to avoid breaking backwards compatibility - not just things like the readers but backend payment systems using something like fixed length records, but also restaurants needing to stop having a single terminal used for every table (this is why they went chip and no PIN).
Going back to the original comment, that’s the peace of mind benefit I see: those businesses can slack on security without me getting stuck with a potentially massive bill.