Online Fraud Attack Rates Soar Since October

It’s official.

Since the cutover to EMV in October, fraudsters have moved their business online. And we can tell you just how much.

The Global Fraud Index, a PYMNTS and Forter collaboration, shows that online fraud attacks have jumped by 11 percent since the shift. Digital goods retailers have suffered the worst of all as those merchants (think games, songs, movies) have seen a more than 300 percent increase in fraud attacks since the liability shift.

The culprit? Botnets. Eighty-three (83) percent of domestic attacks have utilized botnets, while less than 50 percent of European attacks and less than 40 percent of attacks around the rest of the world deployed them.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Other key takeaways from The Global Fraud Attack Index for the second quarter of 2016 include:

There were 27 attacks for every 1,000 transactions conducted in 2015 Q4. That’s 11 percent more than were reported in 2015 Q3, and a 215 percent increase from 2015 Q1.

The attack rate more than quadrupled for digital goods, and nearly doubled for luxury goods, between Q4 of 2015 and Q1 of 2016.

$4.79 out of every $100 of sales are at risk, up $2.90 (150%) out of $100 from 2015 Q1.

The PYMNTS and Forter Global Fraud Attack Index provides a quarter by quarter indexing of on how fraud attempts, reflected as a percent of U.S. sales transactions, on U.S. merchant websites, are trending. Are they up? Down? Calm? Chaotic?

That’s pretty critical since the key to preventing fraud is understanding where fraud is originating, what tools the fraudsters are using, and which industries and areas they are targeting.

The Index reports this in several ways. Each Index includes a metric which quantifies the rate of fraud attempts on U.S. online merchants and how that changes over time. The Index examines different aspects of fraud, like which countries or regions are most seriously threatened by fraud, and which industries should take a closer look at what’s happening around them. It also explores what can be done to stop or slow down fraud trends, and how those methods are (or are not) working.

To download the 2016 Q2 PYMNTS.com The Global Fraud Attack Index, powered by Forter, click the button below.

About the Index

The Global Fraud Attack Index, a PYMNTS/Forter collaboration, measures how the rate of fraud attempts on U.S. merchant websites change over time and examines the types, sources and geography of fraud attacks. The report also quantifies the potential cost to merchants, left unchecked, of these attempts based on attack amounts and how these amounts are trending over time.