Industry news

UK businesses 'not ready for Sepa'

UK businesses have been warned about their 'laissez-faire' attitude to fraud risks since the 'single euro payments area' (Sepa) directive, silicon reports.

As faster payment protocols are due to go live in May, UK firms are not predicting any changes to their systems to introduce anti-fraud measures, according to the industry news provider.

Experian Payments conducted a survey of utilities, telecoms and insurance companies and found that 98 per cent were not planning to change security policies.

Nearly nine-tenths had not yet assessed the fraud risk of Sepa, since its launch at the beginning of the year.

Alistair Newton, the vice-president of banking and investment services at Gartner, said there is often a difficulty in assessing the value of data on payment fraud because of the difference in how it is measured between different organisations.

"The important angle here is that there is clearly a lack of visibility around payment fraud at a corporate level," he concluded.

Associated Press reports that two groups working separately to boost Europe's defence against online crime met this week to review the implementation of the international convention on cybercrime.