NEW YORK – In a report on Tuesday, NBC’s “Today”  reported on the latest efforts to prevent credit card fraud at the gas pump. 

The “Today” report cites Conexxus estimates that the industry lost at least $250 million to credit and debit card fraud last year — losses that get passed on to customers in the form of higher prices. Conexxus Executive Director Gray Taylor told “Today” that this figure is based on a nationwide survey of service stations conducted in 2010. "The problem hasn't gotten any better since then," he said. "In fact, it's probably gotten worse with all the big breaches."

Visa recently announced that it has developed a solution — Visa Transaction Advisor (VTA) — to spot lost, stolen or counterfeit cards. VTA analyzes about 500 pieces of data, such as location, past transactions and whether the account has been involved in a data breach, to create a risk score from one to 99. It takes less than a millisecond after the card is swiped to do this. The gas station owners decide their risk tolerance, not Visa, and what score they want to trigger the alert that tells the customer to see the attendant.

According to the “Today” report, Visa did a two-month pilot test at 300 Chevron stations in Los Angeles prior to VTA’s national rollout. Those stations saw a 23% reduction in fraudulent chargebacks. About 25,000 gas stations across the country, many of them Chevron, now use VTA. Shell is currently testing the program at many of its stations.

Visa is already looking for the next best location to deploy its new software, possibly ATMs or kiosks that sell expensive items. Another potential market might be e-commerce. Online merchants are a prime target for payment fraud because card authentication is much more difficult with online transactions.