According to IMRG, the scheme is scheduled to go live at the end of October and so be available to help protect on-line merchants during the Christmas and January sales shopping periods. The list of merchants that have applied for the service includes Argos Direct, Blockbuster, Carphone Warehouse, lastminute.com and Dvd.co.uk.
MasterCard Australasia is also in the early stages of developing a series of site data protection standards for merchants, according to Silicon.com. The company reportedly said that tougher security standards are required due to the increase in "card-not-present" transactions.
More information about the IMRG Security Alert Service for UK merchants is available at:
www.imrg.org/8025696F004581B3/pages/online+shopping+fraud?OpenDocument