Pireaus Bank in its continuous efforts to upgrade its technological infrastructure to enable the Bank to provide leading services to its customers has implemented a new software system, SafeGuard™, to detect and prevent fraud in the area of credit and debit cards. In particular, the Bank's objective is to protect itself and its customers against fraud attacks especially now in the face of the impending Olympic Games.
The SafeGuard software system has been implemented in record time (just a few weeks) with close cooperation between
- Piraeus Bank Direct Services S.A. (PDS), the arm of the Bank that operates the issuing and managing of Credit and Debit cards
- ABC S.A. (ABC), which processes the Bank's Merchant acquiring agreements and transactions.
- The Information Technology (IT) Division of the Bank
and - Synectics Ltd, a Cyprus Company that develops and promotes leading software for the banking sector with customers from Oman to Ireland.
SafeGuard will be used by ABC for its acquiring / processing operations with special emphasis on early identification and prevention of fraudulent activities at the Bank's merchants. Such fraud is accomplished, for example, through the use of stolen cards or skimmed cards, a term that refers to the copying of the underlying card data to produce a fake (copy) card. In this way, both the Bank and the Merchants will be protected by a 24-hours protection mechanism that will be operated by the Bank and ABC.
At the same time, PDS will be using SafeGuard to monitor its credit and debit cards to quickly identify and curb fraudulent activities. The System will keep an eye on VISA and MasterCard transactions. The Bank will utilise SafeGuard to scrutinise transactions of its cardholders that take place both in Greece but also overseas.
Furthermore, SafeGuard will scrutinise round the clock the Bank's ATM network and it will give timely alerts on unusual or suspicious behaviour.
Despite working within very tight schedules, Pireaus Bank and Synectics have managed to establish "Live" operations well before the Athens Olympic Games and in this context it will prove to be a really indispensable tool in containing any fraud attempts against the Bank.