Which is more secure, Visa or Mastercard?*
TY for the A2A.
There are two facets to security of a Visa or MasterCard credit card:
- Security features supported
- Security features implemented / enforced.
Visa and MasterCard are more or less the same in terms of support for security features. If Visa has VbV for 2FA (two factor authentication), MasterCard has MSC for 2FA.
The real difference comes in implementation / enforcement of security features. Here, Visa / MasterCard allow a degree of discretion to Issuers and Merchants.
Some Issuers / Merchants may implement and enforce 2FA.
Some others may not.
Accordingly, the Visa card issued by Bank A may be more secure than the MasterCard issued by Bank B whereas the Visa card issued by Bank C may be less secure than the MasterCard issued by Bank D.
But the above is moot.
If you go back to the raison d'être of credit cards, your question is not the right question.
The really important question is, which card is more convenient.
When credit cards were invented, they were meant to replace cash by being as easy to use as cash. If, in the process of fulfilling that goal, a credit card is used fraudulently, the Issuer bank is required to reverse the charge, no questions asked.
Many cardholders don’t know this. Issuers have flipped the issue to security by layering on more and more security measures. These increase friction, make it inconvenient to use credit cards, and cause a manifold increase in failed payments. But, by making cardholders value security, and by increasing security, banks have coolly transferred their fraud protection liability to cardholders.
It might sound counterintuitive but the more secure a credit card is, the more liable the cardholder is for fraud and the more scotfree the bank goes in case a fraud happens.
*: This is the original question I answered. I’m repeating it to help me make sense of my answer in case it’s moved to / merged with some other question that I didn’t answer.