The manoeuvring is being influenced by the federal Government's $1.1 billion welfare Access Card project, but fresh questions have arisen over whether or not smartcards will provide consumers with significantly improved protection from credit card fraud.
Banks have claimed major victories in cutting credit card fraud thanks to the implementation of crime busting computer systems that use neural networking technology to detect illicit transactions.
Visa Australia head of business development Vipin Kalra said computer systems enabled banks to almost halve the cost of credit card fraud over the past five years.
Credit card fraud rates had been cut from up to 0.05 per cent of total Australian credit card sales five years ago to less than 0.03 per cent, Mr Kalra said.
The most common forms of fraud were skimming and counterfeiting, he said.
The Australian Payments Clearing Association agrees that the highest card fraud losses by value stem from skimming and counterfeiting, but estimates 2006 credit card fraud at 0.039 per cent of card transactions, or $87.4 million.
"We've seen a big drop in fraud in Australia over the past couple of years," Mr Kalra said.
"(The drop is because of) the banks' ability to put a lot of monitoring systems in place so they can track activities on the card. Those systems are now starting to show their benefits."
ANZ Bank widely advertised its Falcon neural network as part of a campaign to establish its security credentials.
Falcon identifies anomalous credit card transactions and is one of three platforms the bank uses to manage credit card fraud.
The others - Eagle and Hunter - are merchant-oriented systems to track fraudulent credit card applications.
ANZ general manager of consumer cards Nick Reade said these systems had helped the bank cut credit card fraud by 60 per cent in the past five years.
He cited examples where Falcon detected the use of a stolen credit card before the cardholder knew his wallet had been purloined because of changes in the buying patterns detected by the bank's systems.
Systems such as Falcon were an important part of ANZ's drive to establish itself as the most security conscious Australian bank, he said.
"Pretty well everything we do nowadays we communicate that we take fraud very seriously," Mr Reade said. "A lot of our own internal research on what's important to customers - drivers of satisfaction, drivers of usage of credit cards - increasingly (show) what's coming out as number one is security."
Mr Kalra said the fraud-fighting capabilities of computer systems such as Falcon meant banks had not been under pressure to implement smart credit cards.
Microchip-enabled credit and debit cards have long been touted as an important tool in the fight against payment fraud by Visa.
Many Australian banks have argued that the costs of implementing smartcards was greater than the cost of fraud.
"We have to get (to smartcards) but because fraud is under control within the banking industry there isn't a huge urgency to just turn over all the cards over night," Mr Kalra said.
Commonwealth Bank general manager of product and market development Brian White said the success of crime-fighting technologies meant consumers were unlikely to notice big reductions in creditcard fraud following the introduction of smartcards.
"(With smartcards) the consumer on the street has the confidence that he's consistent with the current standard. Does that mean today he's at risk as a consequence? Well the data shows he's not measurably," Mr White said.
Mr Kalra's and Mr White's comments were made at the launch of the Australian Smartcard Users' Forum (ASUF) last week.
ASUF members include the big four banks. It was founded to pressure the federal Government to use private-sector payment networks to process transactions associated with the $1.1 billion welfare Access Card.
ASUF chair and NAB regional general manager for specialised businesses Bruce Munro said the group would work to manage any consumer concerns if banks were seen to be lagging behind the federal Government on using smartcards to protect consumers from fraud.
"One of the reasons we put the forum together was to try and manage perceptions like that," Mr Munro said.
"Another risk, I suppose, is that the use of a chipped Access Card may have some negative connotations that we have to manage for our own roll-outs,"
ANZ's Mr Reade declined to comment on the activities of his competitors but said smartcards would play an important role in protecting consumers from fraud such as credit card counterfeiting.
ANZ has issued 1 million smartcards and has a goal of converting all 3 million ANZ cards smartcards within a year.
The CBA, NAB and Westpac are yet to announce smartcard roll-out timetables.
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