A new programme has been made available to small companies who accept credit card payments to help protect them and their customers against credit card fraud.

The programme, from insurance group RSA, provides companies with the tools to reduce the risk of credit card fraud by protecting cardholder data and building and maintaining a secure IT network.

Des Cross, Retail Director at RSA said that retailers currently face a great deal of challenges with fragile sales and frequent changes to legislation. The threat of security attacks on their computer systems leading to the abuse of customer data is yet another growing worry and could prove costly to their reputation.

Payment fraud is an increasing problem for small businesses, with card fraud losses totalling over £600m in the UK last year – up 14% from 2007.