Shining a Light on Payments Fraud

Jeremy Light has published a useful summary of UK payments fraud ¹. While every country will be different, it is interesting to see what criminals are doing and the payment risk involved.

The UK’s National Payments Vision mentions a figure of £8.3 billion in relation to fraud, while the UK Strategy for Retail Payments Infrastructure says that consumers and businesses ‘can trust that their payments are protected from fraud’. Can both be true?

Fraud levels

2024 data from UK Finance looks at authorised fraud (where a user is scammed into authorising a payment to a fraudster) and unauthorised fraud (where a fraudster takes payment from an account or card without the owner’s consent). It also splits it into account and card-based fraud.