经济学人下载:信用卡 偷蒙拐骗

Finance and economics
财经商业

Credit cards
信用卡

Skimming off the top
偷蒙拐骗

Why America has such a high rate of payment-card fraud.
美国支付卡诈骗频发原因何在

AMERICA leads the world in many categories: shale-gas production, defence spending, incarceration rates and, alas, payment-card fraud.
美国在很多方面都引领世界：页岩气生产，国防开销，监禁率以及，啧啧啧，支付卡诈骗。

In December Target, an American retailer, said that hackers had breached its network and stolen payment-card details of about 40m of its customers.
去年12月份，美国零售商塔吉特公司表示，黑客入侵了其网络系统并窃取了约四千万名顾客的支付卡信息。

A few months before the Target breach, roughly 152m customers had their information stolen in a hack of Adobe Systems.
在塔吉特入侵事件发生几个月之前，一次对Adobe系统的黑客入侵使得大约1亿5200万顾客的信息被盗。

Last month Neiman-Marcus, a department store, reported a similar breach.
尼曼百货商店也于上月报道了类似的入侵事件。

For crooks, there are rich pickings in such data.
对不法分子来说，这些数据有很大的利用价值。

Total global payment-card fraud losses were 11.3 billion in 2012, up nearly 15% from the prior year.
2012年，全球因支付卡诈骗造成的损失达到113亿美元，比前一年增长了15%。

The United States—the only country in which counterfeit-card fraud is consistently growing—accounted for 47% of that amount, according to the Nilson Report: card issuers lost 3.4 billion and merchants another 1.9 billion.
美国作为全球唯一一个伪造卡诈骗不断增加的国家，占到了其中的47%：根据尼尔森报告，持卡人的损失为34亿美元，而商户们则是19亿美元。

A survey released in 2012 by the Aite Group and ACI Worldwide, a research and a payment-software firm respectively, found that 42% of Americans had experienced some form of payment-card fraud in the preceding five years.
研究公司Aite Group和支付软件公司ACI Worldwide发布于2012年的一项调查结果显示，42%的美国人在调查之前的5年中都遇到过支付卡诈骗。

Nor is it just Americans who are affected: foreigners whose card data is stolen often find the thieves have little trouble waltzing into stores and making purchases with ersatz cards.
当然受害的不仅仅是美国人：支付卡信息被盗取的外国顾客也经常发现不法分子轻而易举地就能在商店里用仿制的支付卡进行购买。

Europeans rack up more losses in this way in America than in any other country.
欧洲顾客在美因此类手段而遭受的损失要超过在其他地区。

In part, fraudsters target the United States because that's where the cards are.
诈骗犯瞄准美国的一个原因是，大部分的支付卡都在这里。

At the end of 2013 there were 1.2 billion debit, credit and pre-paid cards in circulation in America—more than in any other region.
在2013年底，在美国流通的借记卡、信用卡和预付卡总数为12亿—超过任何其他地区。

That is nearly five cards per adult.
平均每个成年人拥有近5张支付卡。

But America also makes things easy for fraudsters: alone among developed countries, it still relies exclusively on cards with magnetic strips, which are far less secure than the chip-and-PIN technology used elsewhere.
同时美国也让诈骗犯们更易得手：它是发达国家中唯一依然只使用卡片磁条作为安全手段的。

This combines a personal code with a microchip from which it is harder to extract data than a magnetic strip.
相比其他地区使用的芯片密码技术，这要不安全得多。芯片密码技术将个人密码存储在微芯片中，从中提取出信息要比从磁条中提取困难得多。

As of 2012, 45% of the world's payment cards and 76% of terminals were equipped to use chip-and-PIN.
截至2012年，全世界45%的支付卡和76%的支付终端装备了使用芯片密码的设备。

By 2011 this technology had brought some forms of card fraud in Britain to their lowest level in two decades.
这项技术在2011年为英国将各种形式的支付卡诈骗降低到了20年中的最低水平。

The spread of chipped cards in Canada brought losses from skimming—stealing data from credit cards—from C142m in 2009 to C38.5m in 2012.
而在加拿大，芯片卡的普及也使盗取信用卡信息引起的损失从2009年的1亿4200万加元减少到了2012年的3850万加元。

At a series of Senate hearings earlier this month, Target's CFO said it would spend 100m to roll out chip-and-PIN store-issued credit cards and payment devices that accept them.
本月早些时候，在一系列参议院听证会上，塔吉特的财务总监表示该公司会斥资1亿美元推行采用芯片密码的商店发行信用卡以及相应的支付设备。

A consumer advocate urged other card issuers to do the same.
消费者呼吁其他支付卡发行商也采取类似措施。

Though the switch may cost issuers and merchants as much as 8 billion, interest at long last appears to be growing.
虽然这样做会给发行商与商户们增加高达80亿美元的开销，但长期利益将不断显现。

Many of those costs may be recoverable over time through lower fraud losses.
这些花费中的大部分会通过降低诈骗导致的损失而得到补偿。

Chip-and-PIN would also harmonise American and global standards, making it easier for Americans to use their cards abroad and foreigners to use theirs in America.
芯片密码技术还会统一美国和全球标准，利于美国民众在境外以及国外顾客在美国境内刷卡消费。

It will make mobile payments easier.
这将使移动支付更为便利。

And because recent banking regulations have reduced the amount of money banks make from interchange fees on debit cards, issuers are looking to trim costs elsewhere.
由于银行业中新出台的法规使得银行借记卡交换费的收入减少，支付卡发行方们正想方设法削减开支，

Fraud losses no longer seem as manageable as they once did.
而诈骗引起的损失看来没有往日那样容易控制了。