Introduction
With some 60 billion credit card transactions worldwide in 2006, card use is at an unprecedented level. Unfortunately, growth in use has been accompanied by growth in fraud, with 2006 global losses valued at $10 billion and UK card fraud estimated at £500m.
The introduction of ‘Chip and Pin’ has had an impact, but criminals are adapting - diverting their efforts to ‘card not present’ usage like online and mail order shopping. Fraud in this area grew by 37% in 2007 over its 2006 level.
Card fraud has a significant impact on society. Involvement of organised crime leads to fraud on an increasingly massive scale with knock-on funding of other crime and terrorism. At the same time, card use is levelling as consumer concerns about security grow and this has an effect on the economy (there is evidence that customers are increasingly reverting to using cash for fear of card skimming of theft of their details). The economy is also affected by the impact of card fraud on the insurance industry whose additional costs will doubtless pass to the merchant and ultimately to the consumer.