The Magneprint technology, presently being beta-tested in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, is designed to prevent card skimming, whereby a perpetrator fraudulently captures data stored on an electronic device or other media. The data is then used to produce a duplicate or cloned card, which can then be used for fraudulent purchases.
John Sullings, MasterCard's director of security and risk management for Australasia, said "obviously we're pretty happy with the results thus far" of the beta test, due to conclude in December this year.
He said that, while the card skimming was not nearly as great a problem in Australia as it was in Malaysia, it had still increased 300 per cent within the past 18 months.
More than 250 merchants in Kuala Lumpur are participating in the test, which involves the retro-fitting of merchant terminals with Magneprint-capable readers. The terminals are programmed to send the Magneprint value with the authorisation request message to the card issuer's host system for verification.
According to Magneprint, the technology uses the unique physical properties of a magnetic stripe to differentiate between an original and a cloned card.
"The combination of the unique magnetic stripe characteristics, together with the account number and other data encoded on the stripe by the issuer, makes the card virtually non-replicable," Magneprint officials said in a statement.
"The Magneprint value of an authentic card is read and then stored in the issuing bank's authorisation system.
"This ensures that a cloned card, presented as the original, will be detected during the authorization process, as the Magneprint value of a cloned card will not match with that of the authentic card".
The officials said the trial had already exposed some instances of card skimming.
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