“Payments fraud is an ever-changing beast, with fraudsters and law enforcement officials effectively playing a game of personal finance one-upmanship. Not only do consumers feel the need to worry about the traditional means by which criminals might gain access to their funds – such as shoulder surfing at ATMs, technology that makes it easy to copy one’s physical credit card, and pickpocketing – but we must also consider the likes of computer and database hacking. There have been a number of high-profile cases in the past few years where a company’s firewall has been breached, resulting in the theft and ultimate sale of millions of consumers’ financial information. Even so, cumulative fraud losses only amounted to about $0.09 per $100 in credit card and debit card transactions during 2006, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.”