I got a pamphlet about this yesterday, visited the web site, was about to register, then saw mention of "participating retailer", which suggests to me that not all online retailers do participate. Actually, how many do participate? Does anybody know, roughly, of course? I shall try to contact someone at Lloyds Tsb also, but in this day and age of anonymous corporate representation, I won't hold my breath.
Is this ClickSafe thing worth bothering with, or is it just another gimmick from the banking fraternity?
Barclaycard do something similar, and my experience with that is that not many retailers participate so you forget you registered. But just when you least expect it - a retailer does ask - so you need to remember yet another password!
Clicksafe is LloydsTSB's implementation of both Verified By Visa and Mastercard SecureCode depending on what sort of card you have list of retailer can be found at the following sites.
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What I have tended to find is that orders are processed a bit quicker as the retailer is provided with a extra level of security verificatrion and I suspect it from their point of view it also helps reduce transaction costs on Cardholder Not Present transactions as these are traditionally very costly due to the inherent risks fraud of not actually having the card and customer to be able to check the signiture or verify by pin.
Basically it is the online equivalent of chip and pin where the merchant transfers you as part of the checkout procedure to the card issuers verification site who present you with a personalised welcome message you initially setup so you can verify that it is not a fake and prompt you to enter a security password to verify you are the cardholder.
It seems to work and there does seem to be a slow increase in the number of merchants as they redesign their payment processing engines, I basically looked on it as anything had to be an improvement over the old system of just handing over your card number.
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