Putting a finger on credit card fraud

When it comes to new ways to pay with your credit cards, attention right now is focused on Apple Pay, a new digital wallet from Apple that works with the iPhone 6 and 6 plus and will eventually work with the Apple watch. Apple Pay stores your credit, debit, and prepaid card data and uses your fingerprint, instead of passwords, to authenticate your identity when you try to make a purchase at a retailer.

Taking security to a new level

Traveling abroad? Read about one man's journey to find a credit card that would work.

Reducing credit card fraud

Now, digital wallets such as Apple Pay, Google Wallet, and Softcard offer even greater security. They let you make purchases using your smart phone—but for thieves, accessing your card data is much tougher, if not impossible. Apple Pay, for instance, doesn't even store your credit card information on your phone. Plastic cards, which require your fingerprint to authorize you as the owner of the card, are another way of making the cards in your wallet more secure. It may be a while, though, before most of us get a card like that. Zwipe and MasterCard plan to release a biometric credit card next year, but only in the U.K. A rollout date in the U.S. has not yet been set. —Nikhil Hutheesing (@Nikhil212 on Twitter)