Complaining in public

I was interested to hear this week that the US consumer watchdog, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has launched a public website that publishes consumer's complaints about credit cards. Interested because this is a novel approach which attempts to put the customer first and follows a spate of high profile data breaches which have forced the government and the industry to respond to customer concerns.

One interesting by-product of this approach is that this could well be a good opportunity for the banking industry to seize the initiative to educate their customers on the security and privacy aspects associated with credit card fraud, and electronic fraud in general. In the UK, for example, the government has launched the national initiative, Get Safe Online, which aims to raises consumer awareness of the potential dangers of the net and provides advice on how to protect their data. The banking industry could certainly help this cause in not only educating their customers of the benefits of safe online practices, but also by providing them with the best possible means of securing their data and transactions.

For security to become more effective and also more efficient, the industry needs to move towards a multi-layered approach to authentication and real-time transaction verification. This will only happen through greater customer understanding of security, but will ultimately result happier customers and fewer complaints.