Butterfield Bank has adopted a new standard for protecting customers who use their credit and debit cards for online purchases.

The fraud prevention standard was developed by Europay, Mastercard and Visa as a new way to validate card transactions to decrease the incidence of fraud and false declines, whilst making transactions more straightforward for customers. The more secure service is available through participating online merchants.

It is called EMV 3-D Secure, and it uses “sophisticated logic to authenticate online transactions, and, in practice, automatically checks and clears more than 95 per cent of transactions using stringent, dynamic criteria”, according to the bank.

It said that when an online transaction can’t be fully authenticated in the background, a box will appear on the customer’s screen, which could be their computer, phone or tablet, asking them to call in to authenticate the purchase.

The new standard is said to enhance the existing Verified by Visa and Mastercard SecureCode online verification tools by providing a more secure two-factor authentication method that allows purchases without the need for customers to remember static passwords or use different authentication methods when using different device types.

Peter Jackson, Butterfield’s group head of card services, said: “EMV 3-D Secure is an innovative fraud-prevention solution; one that makes things both more secure and more convenient for our customers.

“It is the latest in a series of upgrades to our card products that we’ve introduced over the last few years, including Chip and PIN technology, and contactless payment on select products.”

He added: “We have worked closely with our partners at Visa and Mastercard to configure EMV 3-D Secure for our markets and deliver better online shopping security to consumers in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.”