HSBC has announced the introduction of an additional layer of security for its credit card holders.Customers who sign up for the “Credit Card Alert” programme receive personalised e-mail notifications whenever international, local and online credit card transactions are made on their accounts.The new programme, HSBC said, is designed to protect customers from fraud by allowing them to detect unfamiliar, potentially fraudulent transactions earlier. Tanya Bule, interim head of retail banking and wealth management and marketing at HBSC, said: “We are proud to be the first financial institution in Bermuda to offer our customers this enhanced level of security.”She added: “The bank cannot eradicate fraud completely, but with Credit Card Alerts we can provide our customers with the means to work together with us to minimise the potential negative impact. “Alerts can be fully customised, with customers benefiting from having the ability to filter out the alerts by transaction type, transaction amount and limit amounts.”HSBC said more than $5 billion in card-related fraud losses have been reported globally this year.In Bermuda, it said, this type of fraud has impacted the island via fraudsters’ use of card skimming devices at on-island ATMs. If successful, the information obtained from cards through this process can create “dummy cards” containing customers’ magnetic stripe information that could subsequently be used to purchase goods or services.HSBC said while the overall global trend of reported fraud losses is marginally improving (mostly due to the continued roll out of chip and pin), the majority of fraud losses globally continue to occur when the card is not present during online and telephone purchases.For more information about the free-of-charge programme, and to sign up online for it, go to www.hsbc.bm/credit-cards/alerts/.