Visa launches new roadmap to secure Sri Lankans engaging in e-commerce

From left: Visa Head of Risk for Asia Pacific Joe Cunningham, Visa Country Manager for Sri Lanka and the Maldives Anthony Watson and Payment Card Industry Association of Sri Lanka President Thusitha Suraweera launch Visa Future of Security Roadmap
Pic by Pradeep Dilrukshana

As Sri Lanka’s electronic transaction grows rapidly driven by evolving e-commerce space, Visa, the global payments technology company launched a new roadmap to secure Sri Lankan consumers and businesses from breaches.

 “Securing the e-commerce ecosystem is a shared responsibility, and everyone has a role to play in protecting the Sri Lankan consumers and businesses from breaches of any kind,” Visa’s Head of Risk for Asia Pacific, Joe Cunningham asserted at the launch of the Visa Future of Security Roadmap in Colombo yesterday.

Visa has experienced an over 20 percent Year-on-Year (YoY) growth in electronic transactions (excluding ATM withdrawals) in Sri Lanka up to end of last June, according to Visa’s Country Manager for Sri Lanka & Maldives, Anthony Watson.

“In Sri Lanka, a growing interest in e commerce has fuelled the country’s economic drive, giving many Sri Lankans the opportunity Visa launches

to engage with regional and global markets online. Sri Lankans are keen to embrace expansion and enhancement of payment gateways globally and are conscious of ensuring safety of such payments,” Cunningham added. Sri Lanka is among major 12 markets for Visa in Asia Pacific, and Visa has launched its security roadmap in Sri Lanka in association with the Payment Card Industry Association of Sri Lanka (PCIASL) ahead of other major markets such as India. 

A key element of the roadmap is to replace the sensitive data of consumers in payment platforms with tokens which are invaluable if stolen. 

“We are replacing the sensitive data in the payment system with the data that would be worthless if stolen, termed as devalued data. As a consumer, your sensitive data won’t be stored anywhere. 

However, unfortunately, today, it’s stored in many places. Those places have become targets for fraudsters.

“For an example, if you go to the same hotel or airline multiple times, there’s a good chance that they are storing your sensitive data. It’s a better experience for you, because you don’t have to remember your sixteen digit number. It comes at a cost; they have to store that sixteen digit number somewhere. What we want do is to replace that sixteen digit number with a magic tokens,” Cunningham elaborated.

The Visa with its clients plans to implement these initiatives within next three years starting from 2020.

 “We want to take a risk-based approach in implementing this; we want various parties in e-commerce sector in the eco-system to make investments. We want to focus on the large and high risk merchant firstly. We want Sri Lankan clients to adopt EMV tokens as we go about,” he said. 

As the role of third party agents such as Fintech firms play an increasingly important role in storing, processing and transmitting sensitive consumer data, and Cunningham stressed that Visa clientele agreed to inform on these third party service providers to Visa. 

“What we have agreed with our clients is that in every market in the world, if you use a third party agent or suppliers to store, process and transmit sensitive piece of data, then you need to tell us. Therefore, we can help them to make sure that they are securing data safely and know about our plans and to enforce our rules,” he said. 

In return, he pointed out that both the third party agents as well consumers benefit from this initiative.  

“We list these third party agents on our website. We assess them as safe, sound and secure. It will become a marketing tool for them,” he noted. 
As per Visa statistics, over 92 percent of fraudulent activities taking place in Asia Pacific are in e-commerce. 

However, fraudulent activities in payment platforms remain low in Sri Lanka compared to the world as well as Asia Pacific.  
“It’s important that security innovation need to keep up with pace with the innovation to maintain the trust and confidence of consumers,” Watson said.  
Visa also has had collaborated with the Central Bank (CB) in developing the road map.

The core tenets of the roadmap include: Devalue data by removing sensitive payment data from the ecosystem and making stolen account details useless, protect data by implementing safeguards for personal data as well as account details , harness data by identifying potential fraud before it occurs and increase confidence in approving good transactions and empower everyone, including accountholders and merchants, in order to play an active role in securing payments.

“We expect over the time, Sri Lankan consumers to feel more empowered to have the ability to turn on and turn off certain features of their accounts. We expect to do that through transaction controls as our clients issue more services and more functionalities in their mobile banking apps,” Cunningham said. 

Caption

to engage with regional and global markets online. Sri Lankans are keen to embrace expansion and enhancement of payment gateways globally and are conscious of ensuring safety of such payments,” Cunningham added. Sri Lanka is among major 12 markets for Visa in Asia Pacific, and Visa has launched its security roadmap in Sri Lanka in association with the Payment Card Industry Association of Sri Lanka (PCIASL) ahead of other major markets such as India.A key element of the roadmap is to replace the sensitive data of consumers in payment platforms with tokens which are invaluable if stolen. 

“We are replacing the sensitive data in the payment system with the data that would be worthless if stolen, termed as devalued data. As a consumer, your sensitive data won’t be stored anywhere. 

However, unfortunately, today, it’s stored in many places. Those places have become targets for fraudsters.

“For an example, if you go to the same hotel or airline multiple times, there’s a good chance that they are storing your sensitive data. It’s a better experience for you, because you don’t have to remember your sixteen digit number. It comes at a cost; they have to store that sixteen digit number somewhere. What we want do is to replace that sixteen digit number with a magic tokens,” Cunningham elaborated.

The Visa with its clients plans to implement these initiatives within next three years starting from 2020.

 “We want to take a risk-based approach in implementing this; we want various parties in e-commerce sector in the eco-system to make investments. We want to focus on the large and high risk merchant firstly. We want Sri Lankan clients to adopt EMV tokens as we go about,” he said. 

As the role of third party agents such as Fintech firms play an increasingly important role in storing, processing and transmitting sensitive consumer data, and Cunningham stressed that Visa clientele agreed to inform on these third party service providers to Visa. 

“What we have agreed with our clients is that in every market in the world, if you use a third party agent or suppliers to store, process and transmit sensitive piece of data, then you need to tell us. Therefore, we can help them to make sure that they are securing data safely and know about our plans and to enforce our rules,” he said. In return, he pointed out that both the third party agents as well consumers benefit from this initiative.  

“We list these third party agents on our website. We assess them as safe, sound and secure. It will become a marketing tool for them,” he noted. 

As per Visa statistics, over 92 percent of fraudulent activities taking place in Asia Pacific are in e-commerce.  However, fraudulent activities in payment platforms remain low in Sri Lanka compared to the world as well as Asia Pacific.“It’s important that security innovation need to keep up with pace with the innovation to maintain the trust and confidence of consumers,” Watson said.  

Visa also has had collaborated with the Central Bank (CB) in developing the road map.The core tenets of the roadmap include: Devalue data by removing sensitive payment data from the ecosystem and making stolen account details useless, protect data by implementing safeguards for personal data as well as account details , harness data by identifying potential fraud before it occurs and increase confidence in approving good transactions and empower everyone, including accountholders and merchants, in order to play an active role in securing payments. “We expect over the time, Sri Lankan consumers to feel more empowered to have the ability to turn on and turn off certain features of their accounts. We expect to do that through transaction controls as our clients issue more services and more functionalities in their mobile banking apps,” Cunningham said. (NF)