Many credit card experts say that the slow adoption of improved credit card technology in the United States has led to greater levels of credit card fraud nationwide.
Most consumers in Canada and Europe use what are known as chip-and-pin credit cards, which store consumer data on an encrypted microchip rather than a magnetic strip.
Since those cards also require a personal code in order to be readable, they are far more secure than the cards seen across the U.S. However, despite that,
McClatchy Newspapers says lenders in the U.S. have been content to pass along the added fraud and
identity theft costs - which topped $3.5 billion in 2010 - to consumers.
"What we've had for a number of years is a flawed card system in this country, and as a consequence of this consumers and merchants are frankly less secure in using cards here than they are in other parts of the world," Mallory Duncan, a senior vice president for the National Retail Federation in Washington, told the news agency.
For more information on information and data security, please see the blog of Identity Theft 911's Chief Information Security Officer
Ondrej Krehel.
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