AN EVALUATION OF A BIOMETRIC ENABLED CREDIT CARD FOR PROVIDING HIGH AUTHENTICITY IDENTITY PROOFING DURING THE TRANSACTION AUTHENTICATION PROCESS

Credit card fraud has continued to grow despite efforts to protect financial data from data breaches of financial institutions. Data breaches of financial transactional records over the past decade have impacted millions of U.S. consumers, resulting in decreased consumer confidence in security. Banking institutions losing money due to fraud are forced to raise interest rates and increase fees to their cardholders. The costs of fraud are passed to the banking institution’s customers to offset the losses. The requisite to detect and eliminate fraud before it occurs is mutually beneficial to both the banking institution and cardholders. Credit card companies continue to focus on methods for identifying fraudulent transactions as they occur and on validating account owners. Financial institutions utilize various models to alert consumers of potential fraud on a real-time basis. Current authorization models that validate the identity of the account holders during the transaction are limited or nonexistent. Many consumers are not required to provide any form of identification or signature proving identity for minimal purchase amount. For purchases requiring validation, consumers are able to validate a transaction with a simple, unverified signature mark at a merchant terminal. The introduction of the chip card added the additional element of security but can be combined with additional user authentication methods. To provide a more secure financial transaction, identity verification as a user authentication method can be realized through biometrics, most commonly, a fingerprint and can be achieved through the use of merchant touch screen credit card terminals or mobile purchasing applications. Using a physical credit card embedded with a fingerprint positions the user authentication process at the point of sale, thus providing real-time validation of the user as the credit card account owner utilizing the biometric fingerprint as identity proof and signature. This research seeks to evaluate the biometric-enabled physical credit card in an effort to increase the level of credit card transaction security and reduce the occurrences of fraud

Family planning service provision in Solomon Islands: a case study approach

Relmah Harrington explored family planning service provision at three health clinics in Solomon Islands. She found, not everyone accessed the service. Predominantly married women attended family planning, men and young people rarely access the services. Policy makers and service providers are using results to improve family planning service provision in Solomon Islands