French newspaper Le Figaro has recently reported on the latest numbers on card fraud victims in France. The numbers, obtained through the country’s national statistics institute (INSEE) revealed that card fraud is up by 30%.
This means that card fraud victims rose from 500.000, to 650.000 in a one-year period. The numbers seem even more excessive when INSEE explains it does not account for stolen cards or cards left at ATMs. “It’s the highest numbers of crime victims in France after car theft,” declared Christophe Soullez, involved in the enquiry.
The majority of card fraud in France is carried out when a consumers users their card online. While 52% of consumers have their card details stolen online, the rest are victims of card fraud in traditional brick and mortar shops (13%), ATMs (13%), bank transfers (7%) and other unknown causes. While the percentage for traditional brick and mortar shop fraud seems low, it still amounts 80.000 victims. Most of these could be avoided, according to experts, if banks had kept their promise of removing the entire card number from sales tickets. Right now a shop worker can simply hold on to the ticket and glance at the clients’ card cryptogram to be able to use it online.
Moreover, while these victims should be able to recover the money stolen, 23% still had not been fully reimbursed and one in five was waiting on sums superior to 1000 euros. Banks are the ones losing the most from fraud, with reimbursement to clients amounting to 280 million euros in 2011.
These numbers come out just as Europol announced the creation of a European Cybercrime Centre to focus on online card fraud.
