UK payments association Apacs has suggested that buying airline tickets with stolen credit card details will always be attractive for fraudsters.
The airline industry suffered badly from fraud last year because buying flights is an attractive proposition for credit card scammers, according to the UK payments association Apacs.
Research released at the end of last month by risk management solutions provider CyberSource suggested that airlines lost more than $1.4 billion (£944 million) to online fraud in 2008, totalling around 1.3 percent of the firms' total online revenue. Additionally, around 0.9 percent of all online ticket sales were fraudulent.
According to Jemma Smith, head of PR at Apacs, it is unsurprising that credit card fraudsters aim at the travel industry. She said: "If you get hold of somebody's card details then one of the things you may want to do is to buy air tickets."
However, she also claimed that the travel sector was not one of the worst affected areas in terms of credit card fraud in the UK. Ms Smith suggested that this could be the result of security systems and "things in place that aren't available elsewhere in the world", such as Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode.
"I don't know if they have been rolled out in all places and in all countries," she added.
