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Floor limits and credit card fraud in the South African credit card industry

Credit card fraud losses within the South African credit card market in 2006 exceeded
R257M. A portion of these losses (R179M) are within the borders of South Africa and its
common monetary area partners. This represents a startling 70% of credit card fraud on
magnetic stripe cards used within the borders of South Africa.
The South African credit card industry adopts floor limits at certain merchants and
merchant categories. South Africa is one of a few countries in the world that still adopt
floor limits on credit cards within its payment card industry. Credit card transactions on
magnetic-stripe cards conducted below the merchant’s designated floor limit do not go to
the issuing bank for authorization. The first time the issuing bank acknowledges these
transactions is when they are settled on average two days later. The rationale for not
adopting zero floor limits within the South African credit card market is the supposed
inability of the existing telecommunications infrastructure to handle the volume and
frequency of data submitted by merchants for authorization. The impact of reduced fraud
and bad debt losses through adopting a zero floor limit in relation to merchant
operational costs is the basis of the research. The research also aims to examine the
Proposition that the existing telecommunications infrastructure is unable to support a
zero floor limit proposal.

  1. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/48
Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:unisa/oai:umkn-dsp01.int.unisa.ac.za:10500/48
Date January 2007
CreatorsdeMatos, Richard Bernard
PublisherUniversity of South Africa
Source SetsSouth African National ETD Portal
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis

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