Recent efforts by the card schemes and issuers to improve security and detect possible fraudulent transactions may be starting to pay dividends.The United Kingdom has recorded its first-ever fall in card not present card fraud in the first half of 2009.Total losses from phone, internet and mail order fraud on cards fell 18 per cent compared to the same period in the year earlier, according to Financial Fraud Action UK, part of UK Payments Administration Ltd, the organisation that is broadly comparable to APCA in Australia."We are really encouraged by the UK fraud figures," said APCA chief executive Chris Hamilton."I think they are attributing that good result to the two factor authentication introduced by the schemes and extra monitoring by institutions."These are the same things that we are doing here. Institutions are getting really good at real time monitoring of suspicious transactions and the two factor authentication will also help."Visa and Mastercard have both introduced additional steps for authenticating transactions and are trying to encourage merchants to participate."'Verified by Visa' and 'Mastercard SecureCode' are obviously the way forward for the industry to deal with CNP fraud," Hamilton said."It is a bit inconvenient to card holders to have to supply an extra pass code but the message we are getting out is that it is important and well worth it in the long run.