Sky News: UK card fraud rose 18% in 2015, marking the sharpest increase across Europe in 2015, resulting in the loss of around £88.5m for UK cardholders.
Analysts from analytic software company FICO say the rise in card fraud across the UK has been fuelled by a rise in online shopping as well as personal data being stolen through cybercrime.
“E-commerce spending in the UK has nearly quadrupled since 2007, so you see why this is such a target for criminals,” said FICO’s fraud consultant, Martin Warwick.
“When executive dashboards in either retailers or card issuers start flashing red in terms of unacceptable fraud losses, change will have to take place”, Mr Warwick added.
The data from Euromonitor International shows that card fraud rose in 10 of the 19 countries studied, with Greece, Denmark, France and Russia posting the highest increases after the UK.
Card fraud increased by 10% compared to figures for 2014, in part due to the successful rollout of chip and PIN payment, and the digital revolution.
Kendrick Sands, senior analyst at Euromonitor said the projected increase in online payments “suggests additional security measures will be required throughout Europe”.
“If greater security measures are not adopted to combat card not present fraud, the broader advance of card payments over paper alternatives could be negatively impacted,” Mr Sands added.
“For a market that has made the transition of consumer payments from paper to card and electronic alternatives a priority in recent years, increasing the security of transactions must remain a priority to increase consumer confidence in payments.”
FICO is recommending that the financial services industry will either have to find a way to make data useless to criminals or make more use of fraud detection analysis.
