First ECB report on card fraud shows chips have increased the security of physical transactions

The European Central Bank (ECB) has published its first report on card fraud. The report was compiled by the Eurosystem, i.e. the ECB and the 17 national central banks of the euro area. Its main findings are that card fraud has been on a declining trend since 2007, and that technological advances have been key to increasing the security of transactions.  Nothing new there then, but it is good to get further evidence that EMV is working and that steps now need to be taken to prevent losses from payment fraud acquired outside the single euro payments area (SEPA).  SEPA comprises 32 countries and 458 million citizens in Europe.

It states that improvements in the security of cards and the underlying payment infrastructure are the main reason that fraud at ATMs and POS terminals was lower in 2010 than in 2007.  Shame the data only goes up to 2010 as more recent figures produced by the European ATM Security Team (EAST) in their 2011 European ATM Crime Report , indicates that related losses again fell in 2011.  The introduction of regional card blocking (geo-blocking) by banks in six countries is likely to further reduce such losses.

You can download the full report from the ECB website.