The credit card industry has certainly been in the news this week. First David Cameron nearly suggested that British consumers should pay down their credit cards – before his speech was hastily rewritten against a backdrop of weak retail sales.

Then Katie Price aka Jordan – a “professional personality” – was the victim of card fraud, making headlines across the UK press. The papers went into a lot of detail about the £14K fraud. It seems that someone dressed up as Price, withdrew money from her bank account using her details then made credit card purchases giving a different delivery address to the star’s. Price only discovered the fraud when she tried to use her credit cards on a shopping trip and found that they had been blocked.

The result is that this morning a lot more people will be aware of just how easy such fraud is. Now we know that while the public is worried about card security, many current solutions don’t appeal, as anyone who has tried to use a card reader while holding a mobile phone has discovered. But this is a case where existing, fast, invisible technology could have detected the fraud as it was being carried out and Price notified.

An immediate call-back to Price’s mobile phone would have alerted her to the fact that someone was using her card details for the ATM withdrawals and credit card purchases, before such withdrawals and purchases are authorised. Even if the fraudsters had gone to the lengths of hacking her phone and doing a sim swap so they could authorise the transaction by voice, the swap could have been detected and the bank immediately alerted before the fraud could actually occur.

It is often said that only when something happens to someone famous does it become “real” to many people. The technology to stop this sort of fraud exists. Perhaps Katie Price’s plight might make more people – bankers and public – sit up and take notice.