Card fraud levels rise across Europe

New analysis from FICO has revealed a worrying trend of rising card fraud levels and losses across the continent. The data from Euromonitor International on 18 countries shows that Card Not Present (CNP) fraud dominates card fraud losses and has increased across most countries. E-commerce fraud, e-wallet, social engineering and QR code fraud or “quishing” are all rising as well.

In 2024, UK Finance reported £572.6 million in total card fraud losses, a 3.9% increase from £551.3 million in 2023. This goes against the trend of the past few years of falling card losses and a broader trend of stabilisation in the UK payments landscape, which is a cause for concern.

Card Not Present (CNP) fraud remained the leading fraud category, accounting for around 70% of total card fraud losses. This marks an increase of 11% from 2023 and puts the UK at the top of the league table for CNP fraud losses in Europe, underscoring the persistent risk associated with remote transactions.

Conversely, identity (ID) fraud losses dropped significantly by 26% to £58.7M, pointing to a shift in criminal behaviour away from ID theft and towards social engineering, data compromises and scams. The growing use of fraud enhancements such as biometric and behavioural monitoring tools are also likely to have contributed to the decrease. Plus, continued investment by UK and EU financial services in full customer journey visibility and data sharing is enabling identity characteristics to be monitored from onboarding through early book and ongoing lifecycle stages of the customer journey.”

James Roche, Principal Fraud Consultant for FICO in EMEA said “While card fraud loss figures are still lower than the 2015 peak of €1,642 million, the last few years show that fraud in Europe is steadily rising back up towards this figure.

“The UK has followed a similar trajectory to the rest of Europe, aligning with what FICO has seen in terms of the dominant fraud MOs that plague both the UK and Europe, as well as the common approaches taken in the last decade via initiatives such as PSD and PSR.”

Roche continued “The UK has long been a leader in deploying innovative fraud technology, and clearly the challenges are still growing.

“With PSD3 regulations now taking effect across Europe, we see fraud prevention teams moving towards a unified approach to fraud risk assessment.” 

The reports also shows the impact card fraud is having across the region, in Norway fraud losses have dramatically increased over the last few years f €14M in 2021 to €26.4M, rising 8% in 2024.

Denmark demonstrated a more than twofold increase in fraud losses (€19.6M to €47.6M) since 2021, and a concerning 20% rise in 2024 alone.

In Hungary, fraud losses jumped from €3.3M to €22.4M from 2021 to 2024, rising by 22% in 2024.

Whilst Greece has also seen a significant increase, with a twofold increase from €13.4M to €28.4M since 2021 and 20% in 2024.

Sweden’s losses have risen significantly from €13.1M to €24.2M, an increase of around 85% in three years, and 19% during 2024.

Despite the overall EMEA loss picture trending slowly upwards, a few countries are seeing a downward trend in their card fraud losses. France’s losses are slowly but steadily decreasing and have done so consistently since their peak at €433.2M in 2018. They now sit at €409.2M, the second highest losses of the 18 countries studied but setting a good example for controlling their losses.

Meanwhile Turkey showed significantly lower losses at €1.1M for 2024, but they too are reducing their fraud losses consistently and have done since their peak at €14M in 2010. However, 2024 saw fraud rise by 5% in Turkey.

Roche concluded “With PSD3 regulations due to take effect across Europe in the next couple of years, financial institutions must work harder than ever to fight new fraud patterns and improve customer service.

“We are seeing a number of emerging approaches that unify protection that is currently siloed, using 360-degree customer profiling to assess fraud and financial crime risk across all channels and products and throughout the entire lifecycle of the customer (onboarding through to offboarding). We at FICO believe this approach is absolutely critical, as criminals look for the weakest link in fraud defences.”