EU Report on Payment Fraud

The European Central Bank and the European Banking Authority have published a joint report on payment fraud data. The report assesses payment fraud reported by the industry across the EEA and covers semi-annual data reported for the three reference periods H1 2022, H2 2022 and H1 2023, with a focus on the payment instruments of credit transfers, direct debits, card payments (from an EU/EEA issuing perspective), cash withdrawals and e-money transactions. Payment fraud amounted to EUR4.3bn in 2022 and EUR2.0bn in H1 2023.

The report examines the total number of payment transactions and the subset of fraudulent transactions in terms of value and volume. In addition to the aggregated values, the report also presents data based on volumes and sorted by type of payment instruments. The data shows that SCA-authenticated transactions featured lower fraud rates than non-SCA transactions, especially for card payments, both in terms of values and volumes. Furthermore, fraud shares for card payments, both in terms of values and volumes, were ten times higher when the counterpart is located outside the EEA, where the application of SCA is not legally required and may therefore not have been requested. The report considers this proof of the beneficial impact of the SCA requirements. The report also finds that losses due to frauds were distributed differently among liability bearers depending on the payment instrument.

The EBA and the ECB will continue to monitor fraud data and going forward will publish the aggregate data on an annual basis.

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