Are you planning an e-business?

Selling your great product  from home?  Or, perhaps, promoting the beautiful attractions of your district to potential tourists.

These can be great ideas.

But there is one thing you must take into account.

That is potential fraud.

A senior Reserve Bank executive, Philip Lowe, is  sounding the the warning.

And as an Assistant Governor of the Bank, with special responsibilty for Australia’s financial system, Mr Lowe is, definitely, in the know.

He says online credit card fraud, in which the merchant does not actually see the customer’s card, is now the most rapidly rising kind of credit card fraud in Australia.

“Almost half the fraud on credit cards occurs in situations where the merchant does not physically see the card,” Mr Lowe said, in a speech he delivered yesterday.

He said, too, that this kind of fraud had increased by around 50 per cent over the past year.

“If this trend were to continue, it could undermine consumer confidence in transacting business on line,” Mr Lowe said.

To say nothing of merchant confidence, in this increasingly common kind of commerce.

Mr Lowe said more needs to be done to offer consumers highly secure payment options.