Europe’s card fraud value hits €1.55bn, report shows  

Charles Abuede

• The UK accounts for 45% or €706.9mn of total

Europe’s card extortion value has hit Є1.55 billion with the United Kingdom representing practically half at 45.36 per cent or Є706.9 million, according recent data in a report prepared by BuyShares, accessed by Business A.M. 

The data also shows that Romania has the least card fraud at Є2.9 million.

Losses from card fraud have continued to spike as criminal groups devise new strategies to steal from consumers, the report noted.

As a result of this, consumers and businesses worldwide continue to account for enormous numbers of losses from card fraudulent activities.

The research also contains an overview of the distribution of fraud losses on UK-issued debit and credit cards based on type. Remote purchases accounted for the largest share at 76 per cent. On the other hand, card not received accounts for the least share at one per cent.

E-commerce businesses fuelling debit, credit card fraud in Europe

The United Kingdom accounts for the highest fraud cases considering that it’s one of the noteworthy credit and debit card markets based on volumes and values of card transactions. The high value of extortion is an aftereffect of a high level of online purchase card usages.

According to the data, the Card not Present (CNP) extortion keeps on picking up prominence in a period most clients are getting some distance from utilizing their physical cards and essentially enter their details to make a purchase. Eminently, CNP fraud has gotten more famous with the development of eCommerce and the expanded security around different kinds of fraud.

The report also explained that one prominent source of CNP fraud has been the malware and phishing attacks that have become progressively refined, adding that in Europe, most cards accompany an EMV chip which requires a PIN to be entered into the vendor’s terminal for payment approval.

It noted, however, that a PIN is not needed for online transactions, posing an ideal road for fraudsters.

Besides the fraud exuding from growing eCommerce, emerging and alternate payment alternatives like contactless payment keep on driving innovation within criminal groups to enable them to abuse new technologies. However, new card-less payment techniques may also bring about a downwards trend in card fraud.

The role of criminal groups has additionally started becoming the overwhelming focus in rising card extortion. Such groups utilize a wide scope of techniques like the assortment of data, threats, and bots. Most gatherings have culminated the specialty of social engineering and data breaches to take individual information. The stolen information is utilized to commit extortion directly and indirectly and by implication create unapproved purchases online. Individual details are additionally used to assume control over an account or apply for a credit card in another person’s name.

How are institutions combatting credit, debit card frauds?

The report stated that from a market point of view, both payment service providers and card payment scheme operators have put in place a wide range of fraud prevention and detection security tools, noting that prominent highlights incorporate card tokenization planning to bring extortion rates down just as offer new instalment highlights on portable gadgets, similar to cell phones.

It notes that card issuers have continued to maintain a few countermeasures, similar to programming that can estimate the likelihood of fraud, adding that payment institutions require mandatory active risk management to fight online fraud on the internet and mobile devices. The report writers stated that fraud and risk prevention services must embrace anti-fraud measures every day.

According to the report, as highlighted, the expanded card extortion has been raised by the expanding utilization of cards for instalments; notwithstanding, most service providers and banks are presently pushing customers to mobile applications, which are safer than online payment applications.

It then advised that in general, payment companies need to deploy procedures to prevent fraud like machine learning and behaviour analytics to identify obscure behaviour on accounts.

Besides, it stated that there was also the need to set up rules that target known threats and practices that could indicate fraudulent activity.