As credit and debit cards become more difficult to counterfeit, thanks to the slow but progressing EMV migration, we are seeing the predicted shift from card present fraud to Card-Not-Present transactions and account take-overs. And now, CNBC is reporting a significant up-tick in new account fraud has been measured:
The days of spotting an unauthorized charge on your credit card aren’t over, but criminals have been increasingly focused on perpetuating a kind of fraud that’s harder for consumers to spot and can be more difficult to fight — opening new credit cards and other accounts in the victim’s name. Such “new account fraud” jumped 113 percent in 2015, and now represents 20 percent of all fraud losses, according to a new report from Javelin Strategy & Research.
So for all the effort and billions spent to secure our payment systems, what has the net impact been? The statistics provided suggests we are just maintaining the status quo and we have a lot of work still to do:
Fraud losses from unauthorized purchases or withdrawals on an existing account fell from $14 billion to $12 billion last year, the report says, contributing to an overall decline in fraud losses for 2015. But those stemming from new account fraud increased from $2 billion to $3 billion.
Overview by Sarah Grotta, Director, Debit Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group
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