NEW YORK, NY -- (Marketwired) -- 07/15/14 -- SmartMetric, Inc. (OTCQB: SMME): SmartMetric, the maker of biometric activated credit and debit cards, says the current credit card as a secure payments instrument is seriously broken and a better and more secure card technology is urgently needed in order to protect consumers and financial institutions alike, said the President & CEO, Chaya Hendrick. She further said even the new EMV cards being introduced into the United States won't solve card fraud altogether, although EMV chip cards will have an impact on card fraud. The best solution against credit card fraud is tying the user's biometrics to the card in a way that makes the card useless without a biometric authentication, Chaya Hendrick said.
For the first six months of 2014, there have been 383 data breaches nationwide, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center in California. "We're far ahead of the pace in 2013. For the entire year last year, there were 614 breaches. That's an increase of 25 percent year over year," they said.
Identity theft has been the No. 1 consumer complaint for 14 years in a row but has escalated with several big high-profile breaches. From Target, eBay, Neiman Marcus and most recently, AT&T, data breaches leading to identity theft is at an all-time high as more than 13 million people in the United Stated were victims of identity theft last year. That's one person every two seconds.
The Average consumer financial loss in 2013 per identity theft incident was $4,930. The total financial loss attributed to identity theft in the United States in 2013 was $24.7 billion. The total financial loss in the United States attributed to identity theft in 2010 was $13.2 billion. *
The SmartMetric fingerprint activated credit and debit cards use biometrics to defend consumers and banks alike from fraud. The company that has added a fingerprint scanner built inside EMV payment credit and debit chip cards and using a person's fingerprint stored inside the card to activate the cards chip following a scan and match on the card, thereby creating a second secure layer biometric authentication protection in defending against card fraud. The company is now actively marketing its technology to card issuing financial institutions around the World.
