We’re no. 1

[Dave Birch] According to recent APACS figures, total card fraud losses on U.K. issued cards went up by a quarter in the first half of this year. This increase has been driven by a 126 per cent rise in fraud on U.K.-issued cards being used overseas (U.K. retail losses were down 11 per cent, U.K. cash machine losses down 57 per cent). The U.K. has long been Europe’s biggest exporter of card fraud, so it’s good to see that our smooth and successful EMV transition has helped us to remain the league leaders. Losses from online, phone and mail order shopping fraud have continued to increase year-on-year but the fraud to turnover ratio on online card transactions has continued to fall. In the U.K. it’s now down to 50 basis points. For comparison purposes, total fraud in a typical card portfolio is about 6 basis points and bad debt is about 600 basis points.

Technorati Tags: ATM, fraud, payments

I found another interesting figure about the U.K. card scene that may provide for the odd interesting slide in a business plan presentation. Britons use credit cards to withdraw £8.3 billion from cash machines every year and for every pound withdrawn using credit cards, 27p is levied in charges and fees by the provider. Surely no-one in their right mind gets a cash advance on a credit card from an ATM. Unless, of course, they are using counterfeit credit cards in foreign ATMs, in which case I shouldn’t think that the cost of the withdrawal is really bothering them.

These opinions are my own (I think) and presented solely in my capacity as an interested member of the general public [posted with ecto]