Prevent and block online payment fraud. With this objective, the Bank of Italy has obliged the credit institutions of our country and BancoPosta to strengthen the security, authentication and monitoring systems. Via Nazionale thus aligns with the European standards passed in recent months by the European Banking Authority (EBA) and makes Italy one of the strictest countries in this sector.
After a consultation launched last summer, Palazzo Koch has updated the previous rules, making them more stringent for various operations: card payments, wire transfers, issuing or modifying electronic direct debit mandates and transferring electronic money between two online accounts.
In practical terms, banks will have to strengthen the procedures for verifying customer identification, for initiating payment transactions and for accessing sensitive information. It will then be mandatory to introduce limits on the duration of work sessions and on attempts to log-in to restricted areas. Finally, institutions will be required to implement transaction monitoring mechanisms capable of preventing, identifying and blocking any fraudulent transactions.
The banks will have until 30 September to comply, then - within the following month - they will have to send a report on the interventions carried out to the ECB and to Bank of Italy itself.
On the other hand, the crackdown comes in a context that is anything but alarming. According to the banking association Abi Lab, the Italian market has never aroused particular concerns regarding online payments: “Over 97% of fraud attempts have been interrupted – reads the 2015 report -. Only one access to Internet Banking for every 1,7 million resulted in a loss of money. There are no cases of fraud associated with the specific services provided through the Mobile Banking channel".
