Safer ways to use a credit card

Credit card data breaches are reported almost every day and more specifically we have experienced increased activity within the last year. As a result more card issuers, banks and others are looking to improve card safety and we as consumers can also take several steps to protect ourselves.

Europeans have been using chip imbedded credit cards for few years now. Most banks in the United States are looking to issue such cards to their customers by October 2015. These chips are called EMV (Europay, MasterCard, and Visa). It only records transactions as a one-time event rendering it useless to hackers and frauds to steal your information. Unfortunately, Internet purchases with a card still make you vulnerable to hackers since it requires providing additional data.

Using Apple Pay or Google Wallet may be a safer option too. They are part of a class known as digital wallet. They carry a security known as tokenization making it more difficult to steal information due to conversion of information into tokens. Unfortunately there are only about five percent of retailers accept these kinds of payments.

Consumers should consider ways they can improve and protect their credit cards. Irresponsible use of cards leaves room for hackers to get information and therefor, use any card with care.