Filenews 1 November 2021 - by Theano Thiopoulou
91% of card fraud in Cyprus is made through online or telephone payments, 2% of fraudulent transactions are made at physical point of sale (POS) terminals, such as face-to-face payments in retail stores or restaurants and 6% via ATMs.
In the ECB's report on card fraud published last Friday, in contrast to card payments in general, for almost all EU countries fraud is mainly related to cross-border payments.
In 19 Member States, cross-border fraud accounted for more than 90% of the total value of fraud for cards issued in their respective countries in 2019.
In several countries, the share of cross-border fraud was close to 100% of total fraud (e.g. Bulgaria, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovakia).
Only in a few countries, mostly larger, domestic markets such as France and the United Kingdom, and to a lesser extent Ireland and Germany, fraudulent domestic transactions appear to play a more important role (accounting for between 21% and 47% of total fraud).
The total value of fraudulent card-based transactions issued within SEPA amounted to €1.87 billion. in 2019. For cards issued in the euro area alone, the total value of fraudulent card transactions amounted to €1.03 billion. Fraud as a percentage of the total value of transactions decreased in 2019, as fraud in absolute terms grew at a slower rate than total card payments. The total value of total transactions with cards issued under SEPA and acquired worldwide increased by 6.5% compared to 2018, while the corresponding fraud increased by 3.4%. As a result, fraud as a percentage of the total value of transactions decreased by 0.001 percentage points to 0.036% in 2019. In the five-year period between 2015 and 2019, the lowest share of fraud was observed in 2017 (0.035%), the lowest rate recorded since the start of data collection in 2007. A share of 0.036% means that on average 3.6 cents were lost to fraud for each transaction worth €100 using cards issued within SEPA in 2019. For cards issued in the euro area, the value of fraud as a share of all card transactions in 2019 remained below SEPA's share overall at 0.032%, although it slightly increased from 0.031% in 2018.
As in previous years, the share of fraud in the total value of card transactions varied significantly between EU Member States in 2019. In terms of extradition, fraud rates in France, the UK and Spain were the highest in 2019, while rates in Romania, Hungary and Poland were among the lowest. In terms of issuance, card fraud as a share of the total value of card payments was lower for the euro area (0.032%) than for SEPA as a whole (0.036%) in 2019. In Cyprus the fraud value as a share of the value of transactions was just over 0.01%.
