SMS to be trailed by Visa as a means of payment verification

Visa are trialing a system where you receive a SMS message whenever you make a purchase as a tool to identify fraudulent payment. This is not a new idea but previously only been used for unusual pattern transactions.

There is a significant concern regarding fraudulent spoofing/fishing attacks with false messages. An example would be that one receives a message along the lines of "This is a security message from Visa, can you please call our team on 0845 123456 now".... I'm sure you can work out the rest. The challenge here is user education as apposes to systems performance.

We wrote about this risk just a couple of weeks ago.

more here...