Leader: Chip and PIN won't solve the fraud problem

It's great news that chip and PIN is stopping fraud on the high street, as shown by the latest figures.

But this means that fraudsters are finding the easy money they've been used to is getting much harder to find. So they are responding to this cut in 'wages' like anyone else - they're looking for a job that pays better.

And it seems they've decided that there is good money to be made by ripping off online retailers and banks instead. So the next obvious step is to beef up protection for those channels as well.

Here's where we hit a bit of a problem - experts reckon it could take 18 months to two years before the still-to-be-decided industry standard for two-factor authentication leads to the creation of products that can secure online transactions.

Which means at least another couple of years for thieves to continue getting rich through weak security.

In the UK banks have started to dabble with more secure approaches, such as the trial of an anti-phishing hardware device kicked off by Lloyds TSB last month.

In contrast, Bank of America is to give two-factor authentication tokens to 14.5 million customers in a bid to cut identity theft.

Of course it makes sense for UK banks to wait until we have a standard based on chip and PIN so that the same authentication technology (probably card readers) can be used by all the banks. But two years is too long to wait.

As it stands, customers may end up preferring a banking brand that can demonstrate it has higher security than its rivals.

So if one bank went out alone and made a show of beefing up protection for the end-user then we might see more urgency from the rest.