As we look at the data from this year’s Annual Report, there are two obvious headlines:
- Card fraud is on the rise, particularly for remote purchases (which represent more than two-thirds of all card losses), where losses have increased by 11% and case volumes are up 22%.
- While APP losses have remained stable, one scam category stands out from the rest: Losses to investment scams increased by 34%.
Neither of these come as a surprise to those working in fraud in the UK.
Card fraud
Over the last couple of years, we’ve seen fraudsters seek new ways to circumvent controls implemented by banks. Exploiting digital wallets has been one of these methods.
Fraudsters can enrol cards to digital wallets in two ways: first, by using functionality made available in mobile applications that allow users to add cards to the device’s digital wallet; second, by exploiting data breaches, or even card information that is made available through digital information, and manually adding the card to the wallet of choice.
We’ve observed a similar trend elsewhere in Europe. BioCatch customers across the continent reported more than twice as many fraud sessions containing non-payment card activity (i.e. viewing card details, registering cards in digital wallets, etc.) in 2024 as they did in 2023. Of these, 45% were wallet enrolments.
With this in mind, it’s important for banks to prioritise securing user-journeys through the digital banking world to protect their customers’ cards and money. While this might sound simple, fraud across cards and remote banking has historically been siloed, often with different platforms protecting each individual digital realm. As such, it becomes almost impossible for banks to get a holistic view of each customer’s behaviour across a variety of platforms.
Banks can look to digital banking to help secure the authorisation of card payments, which increasingly take place within mobile banking apps. BioCatch reported a 16% increase in fraudulent authorisations of card payments in its latest Digital Banking Fraud Trends in the UK report.
Investment scams
The emergence of cryptocurrencies has created a breeding ground for investment scams. Interestingly, we actually see a 24% decrease in investment scam victims, despite the 34% increase in losses. This has led to the average loss per victim ballooning from a little more than £10,000 to more than £18,000.
We might attribute some of this to fraudsters growing more selective in their search for victims, identifying targets with more to lose and then exploiting those potential victims more effectively. Data backs this up. We see the average number of payments on investment scam cases in the UK increased from 3.3 to 3.8 payments per case – the second-most payments per case of any scam type, trailing only romance scams.
Other insights
Outside of these headlines, we do see encouraging signs.
Looking at scams in general, we see overall cases declined by 20% from the year before, with a significant decrease in impersonation scams, offering the lowest case volumes this decade. At BioCatch, we reported a similar decrease in our latest UK trends report, after seeing reported voice scams drop by 34%. Losses to impersonation scams are also at their lowest figures of the decade, with losses down by 25% year-on-year and down by 53% from their post-Covid high.
On remote banking, we also see the lowest losses since 2016 and the lowest case totals since 2014. Internet banking fraud fell below 10,000 cases for the first time ever, while related losses reached their lowest level since 2013.
Meanwhile, we saw mobile banking fraud cases decline from the year before for the first time since 2018 – although, 2024 still accounted for the second-most cases of mobile banking fraud on record. Losses from mobile banking fraud also reached their highest level ever. The latter is no doubt a consequence of the former, but it also shows UK banks have proved able to stop digital banking fraud on desktop devices, and we can expect similar results on mobile eventually.
While the report offers some striking headlines that provide cause for concern (particularly in the card space), we mostly see a continuation of the trends highlighted in the 2024 edition, suggesting fraud-fighting in the UK is headed in the right direction.
