Press Release – San Francisco, CA: July 26, 2018: Nick Brown, payment system expert and founder of Clear Purchase, issued a warning to all those involved in the global Financial Inclusion Initiative. Interoperability, the connecting of financial systems to process financial transactions, massively increases their vulnerability to payment fraud. The devastation that would result from a major fraud attack has the potential to stall the entire global Financial Inclusion Initiative for years, Nick Brown warns. It is possible to minimize the potential damage. We must not let the Financial Inclusion Initiative fail from lack of foresight.
Interoperability massively increases the risk of payment fraud, because each financial transaction involves multiple systems that communicate sensitive information among them. With multiple systems to attack, as well as the communication methods that join them, it will be the weakest link in the chain that becomes the target.
Payment fraud is a massive global problem that exceeds $20b per year. Major criminal organizations have decades of experience in successfully attacking well-established payment systems, despite the huge amounts of money spent every year on prevention. New systems in developing countries that have little or no protection will be easy targets for these criminal organizations.
Nick Brown said, “We must raise awareness in developing countries of the problem of payment fraud, and minimize the vulnerability of their financial systems to a major attack.”
Next week, Nick Brown will start posting a series of blogs on LinkedIn titled “Developing country guide to Payment Fraud.”
Part one: Introduction to Payment Systems and Payment Fraud
Nick Brown is a technical expert with 30 years of experience in the payment infrastructure industry, which included the implementation of the VISA Debit Card system at VISA International in 1996. He has also been involved in writing national and international standards for data security for the financial services industry.
Clear Purchase, Inc., is part of the movement to break the poverty trap in developing countries by creating a truly cashless economy. Their role is to build the payment network hub that connects everyone together, facilitating even the smallest transactions. www.clearpurchase.com
