Combatting corporate credit card fraud

According to a study by Nilsen in 2013, credit card fraud in the U.S. alone rose to a staggering $5.33bn. Globally that figure was estimated to be more than double that amount at $11.27bn.

Recent cyber attacks on U.S. retail chains Target and Neiman Marcus are reported to have netted fraudsters around 110 million sets of customer data, including their credit card numbers. In 2012, about 40 million sets of payment card information were compromised when hackers attacked Adobe's customer databases, many of which belong not to individuals, but to large corporations.

Technological advances are leading to an ever growing global market place, with more and more of us trusting large organisations with our financial information.

However, problems arise for all parties involved once the security of these organisations is breached.

Here at Conferma, we have been working on creating a payment solution that eliminates the risk of large scale fraud, even when hackers are able to steal your corporate credit card information.

So how does our financial technology system work?

We have created a product called Virtual Card Numbers (VCNs), essentially a digital credit card. This means that for every individual purchase undertaken, a unique 16-digit credit card (or 15-digit in the case of American Express), plus three-digit security code, is generated. The VCN can then be accessed via one of Conferma's secure applications on your desktop, mobile or tablet devices.

Each unique VCN is valid for a specified amount of money and for a specified date range. Further controls ensure that a VCN can only be charged by a specified category of merchant. For instance a VCN designated for a hotel transaction can only be charged by a hotel. Only if all these criteria are met is the payment able to be processed.

So, in the event that a merchant from whom you have purchased falls victim to a security breach in the future, a VCN will be useless in the hands of a hacker due to the controls imposed on the VCN.

Our financial technology is available for most major banking and credit card providers, including AirPlus, American Express, Barclaycard, HSBC, MasterCard, U.S. Bank and WEX. And whilst we are best known for our integration of VCNs into the corporate travel sector, we are able to offer a wide range of payment solutions across many industries.

At Conferma, we are committed to eliminating corporate credit card fraud.