Global Payment Card Fraud Trends and Statistics

The consumer use of electronic payment forms like payment cards continues to grow robustly around the world with both mature and developing markets experiencing increased use of cards year over year at both the physical point of sale and online. While much of the global payments industry benefits from this increased use of electronic payments, the downside of this growth has been the rebound of fraud losses despite the industry’s best efforts to minimize consumer exposure.

Industry efforts to reduce fraud exposure through certain payment technologies have resulted in sharp declines in certain types of payment fraud. For example, the smart chip embedded in EMV cards to store and protect cardholder data thwarts counterfeit card fraud. However, changing consumer trends, particularly the growth of card-not-present (CNP) transactions online has left the industry somewhat exposed, and as a result global fraud losses are once again on the rise.

Mercator Advisory Group’s research report, Global Payment Card Fraud Trends and Statistics, examines global payment card fraud by examining fraud statistics and initiatives in four selected countries: the United Kingdom, France, Australia, and South Africa. The report discusses overall fraud rates on domestically issued cards and shows the rate by type of fraud, including counterfeit card, lost/stolen card, card ID theft, mail non-received, and card-not-present fraud.

“While the future of the payments industry is hard to predict, one certainty is that cybercriminals will continue their attacks on consumers, businesses, and financial institutions via the payment channels available today. Although the payments industry may not be able to end all types of payment fraud, it continues to evolve new fraud deterrents and become better equipped to tackle criminal attacks. The hope is that with the creation of new security technologies like tokenization, the industry can begin to play offense rather than always having to play defense against payment fraud attacks,” comments Tristan Hugo-Webb, Associate Director, Global Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group and the primary author of the research.

This report contains 21 pages and 10 exhibits.

Organizations mentioned in this report include: American Express, China UnionPay, Discover, JCB, MasterCard, Visa, Financial Fraud Action UK, Observatory for Payment Card Security of the French Central Bank, Australian Payments Clearing Association, and South Africa Banking Risk Information Centre.

Members of Mercator Advisory Group’s Global Payments Advisory Service have access to these reports as well as the upcoming research for the year ahead, presentations, analyst access, and other membership benefits.