WonderMoms recently attended a dinner with Interac to help highlight the new card features designed to help prevent Fraud and illegal misuse of your card. March is Fraud Protection Month and Interac is making us feel secure while using our Interac Debit card for our everyday purchases.

As you can imagine, criminals don't play by the same rules as us. They will always be on the lookout for new and innovative ways to undermine the system and Interac has got you covered. Criminals want you to use your old magnetic stripped cards, as they are somewhat easier to break. Interac's newer cards come with a microchip inserted in them, with programmed information retrieval, which can only be accessed by proper PIN inputs.

Interac fraud has decreased by some 88% since the chip protection was implemented in 2009. Those statistics cannot be ignored, as it is proof that it works.

For those of us concerned about card safety through card skimming, electronic pickpocketing and retail data breaches, you can rest easy as Interac is always one step ahead.

Interac Flash (Tap) is a case in point. This is an enhancement to the original Interac Debit. It has all the same security features, such as chip technology, Interac zero liability, plus the added protection of small transaction limits. No single transactions can be more than $100 and the total spend cannot exceed $200 before the cardholder must enter their PIN. I feel more at ease already.

Interacts vigilance towards coming up with new and innovative security measures to protect their customer base are always in the forefront of what they do.

On a recent family vacation, we too were subjected to fraud of our debit cards. We were informed that our cards had been compromised at a retail location and that our transaction history was being monitored. The fact that our next purchase was being made in the US set off the alarms. No money was ever removed from our accounts, nor were any purchases made on our cards which was rather comforting to know that the fraud protection services that Interac provides was hard at work. The fact that our cards had been suspended was a mild inconvenience. I would rather just go to my bank to replace the card, instead of spending hours on the phone trying to go over purchases on my stolen card that I know that I had not made.

I'm not suggesting leaving your cards lying around in plain sight, just being a little more protective and aware of their location. Interac will take care of the rest.