The total value of fraudulent transactions conducted using cards issued within SEPA and acquired worldwide amounted to €1.44 billion in 2013, which represented an increase of eight per cent from 2012.

As a share of the total value of transactions, fraud rose by 0.001 percentage point to 0.039 per cent in 2013, up from 0.038 per cent in 2012, a report issued yesterday by the European Central Bank reported.

Card fraud had reached a five-year low in absolute terms in 2011 and the level reported in 2013 is the highest in the previous five years.

However, in relative terms, i.e. as a share of total transactions, fraud is still below the level observed in 2009.

In 2013, 66 per cent of the value of fraud resulted from card-not-present (CNP) payments, i.e. payments via the internet, post or telephone, 20 per cent from transactions at point-of-sale (POS) terminals and 14 per cent from transactions at automated teller machines (ATMs).

With €958 million in fraud losses in 2013, CNP fraud was not only the largest category of fraud in absolute value but, unlike ATM and POS fraud, also the only one recording an increase compared with the previous year, with growth of 20.6 per cent from 2012.

The largest drop in the level of fraud was experienced by card fraud committed at ATMs, with 13.7 per cent less fraud in 2013 than in 2012, the first time in four years that ATM fraud fell, while fraud committed at POS terminals went down by 7.9 per cent.

Counterfeit fraud accounted for 45 per cent of the value of fraud at ATMs and POS terminals, while fraud using lost or stolen cards made up 43 per cent.

“A wider usage of geo-blocking, as well as increased physical security measures at the terminal (e.g. lids to protect PIN entry, skimming device detectors, etc) and the deactivation of the option to fall back to magstripe usage for cards, might also have contributed to this reduction.

“While ATM and POS fraud may diminish further as more countries outside SEPA migrate to EMV (Europay, MasterCard and Visa) standards, CNP fraud is likely to grow further unless appropriate mitigation measures are adopted, such as those required by the European Banking Authority and Eurosystem’s guidelines,” the report said.

• The number of cards per inhabitant ranged from 0.7 in Romania to 3.73 in Luxembourg (Malta: 1.9).

• The number of payments made per year per inhabitant ranged from 21 in Romania to 256 in Sweden (Malta: 77).

• The fraud-related share of the transaction value ranged from 0.004 per cent for cards issued in Hungary to 0.07 per cent for cards issued in France (Malta: 0.05%)