BANKS have vowed to push ahead with tap and go technology despite police concerns that it encourages crime.

Police want to ban banks' tap and go technology after vowing to take on big business over sloppy work practices.

The force said it is sick of "mopping up" for "totally slack" initiatives that it states encourage crime.

But Australian Bankers Association chief Steven Munchenberg said the police attitude was baffling given tap and go fraud was "extremely low".

"We will happily work with police to reduce crime and discuss their concerns but we certainly won't be abandoning the technology," Mr Munchenberg said.

"The industry is somewhat bemused by this focus on tap and go.

"How are criminals going to know when they break into a car or steal a handbag whether there is cash or credit cards or tap and go cards?

"We are struggling to understand the police concern."

Australian Payment Clearing Association figures show credit, debit and charge card fraud in 2012 dropped from 96.4c to 79.3c in every $1000 transacted compared with a year earlier.

Overall card fraud losses dropped from $279 million to $245 million.

But amounts pilfered due to lost or stolen cards rose from $15.8 million to $22.7 million.

Victoria Police said it had kicked off its new policy against service stations, would take on the banks next and revealed the liquor and motor industry would follow.

"The bottom line is, we have a lot of significant demand on our service and we are starting to look a lot more at prevention and the contribution that industry, through their own practices, contribute to crime," Assistant Commissioner Steve Fontana said.

"Retailers and some of the businesses like financial institutions, they introduce practices, new innovations, without any regard to security. And then we get a run of crime and we say 'well, why are we mopping up after their poor practices,' to be quite frank.

"We won't walk away from investigating crime - that's our job - but don't make it that easy for people and then expect us to come and mop up.

"There's a whole range of industries and we are starting to look at crime reduction, how can we do it, who can be held responsible and how can you make it tougher," he said.

media_camera Police are calling for tap and go technology to be dumped.

Mastercard head of market development Matt Barr said dumping the technology was unwarranted and would create a consumer backlash. Fraud rates for in-store transactions had actually declined since the introduction of card chip technology as an alternative to magnetic stripes and forged signature risk, he said.

"We are surprised by the police claims. We don't understand ... why they think it (tap and go) is crazy. Our stats say it isn't a problem," Mr Barr said.

Australian Retailers Association executive director Russell Zimmerman said a ban would punish consumers who were rapidly embracing contactless payments to cut queue times.

"It has had a huge uptake by consumers because it is much quicker and efficient. They are loving it.

"We are covered off, as merchants we aren't responsible for fraud, and consumers are covered unless they fail to report," Mr Zimmerman said.

Visa said its pay Wave cards were as safe as traditional chip cards. Country risk management director Ian McKindley said:

"Card fraud in Australia remains at low levels and there has been no increase in the rate of fraud as a result of the introduction of contactless payments technology."

Mr McKindley said Visa worked closely with law enforcement and banks to address fraud concerns, and welcomed further discussion.

"The rate of fraud conducted using Visa pay Wave is less than half the overall industry fraud rate on credit, debit and charge cards."

Mr Fontana defended a controversial policy not to investigate petrol drive-offs unless there was clear criminality.

He said police introduced the stance after unsuccessfully urging service stations to install prepayment.

"We've looked around the world at practices and Australia is one of the few countries in the world that doesn't do prepaid petrol," Mr Fontana said.

"The majority of petrol theft is preventable, the vast majority can be prevented by industry putting in good practice.

"We spoke to them, the Chief Commissioner spoke to them, and they said they couldn't change their practices because they want people to go into the shop and buy chocolate or whatever it is. Well we said 'fine, but we are going to look at how we respond.'"

He added: "Their inappropriate practices, quite clearly, were tying up our resources and we were just used as debt collectors to be frank and that's not our job."

Victoria Police said it would be speaking to banks about tap and go, technology that allows customers to swipe a bank card to pay for items up to $100 without entering a PIN or signing.

"They've been introduced and what we find is they've actually encouraged crimes," he said.

"Criminals are activating those cards, running round buying all this stuff and you don't even know it's happening.

"It's slack. Totally slack. There's no control over it. And what are we finding? There's been a huge spike in different offences committed to facilitate it; cars being broken into, mail stolen, handbags grabbed, purely because of industry introducing a new practice without any regard to security."

media_camera Tap and Go paypass technology can help encourage crime, police say.

Mr Fontana also highlighted a large liquor retailer with "no controls."

"They've changed their practices, they've now got multiple exits and people are just walking out the door with bottles and slabs of beer under their arm," he said.

Then they come to us and say, 'can you follow this up.' Now let's get fair dinkum here."

The State Tasking Coordination Team, which meet once a month, also revealed the tightening of legislation around illegitimate car dealers selling stolen vehicles was being looked at and how criminals could obtain mortgages with false details.

"For you or I to get a mortgage, you go through a fairly rigorous process, but some of the criminals involved in cannabis grow houses for example, they're buying houses these crooks, but they're buying them under dodgy details - so how's that happening?

"Then you look at some of the larger frauds they've pulled off - it just seems like there is less control with the more money you get."

He added: "I won't go into detail in that particular industry (car) but we are building a picture of what is actually happening and working out a strategy on exactly how to improve regulation, enforcement, investigations and it might be policy change, legislative change. We are looking at the whole industry," he said.

Mr Fontana said he had been given the responsibility, as head of Crime Command, to look at different industries.

"We don't want to be in that reactive space all the time and this is us becoming more strategic about how we deal with industry," Mr Fontana said.

"We have taken the view we should be taking on industry over this because our concern is they've introduced new practices with no regard to the implications on security and there's no prevention measures, which is at times bogging down our members in work and time that could be better spent on some really serious type of investigations or responding to critical issues," he added.

jon.kaila@news.com.au