The decline, which came as spend on cards totalled USD 803.4 billion (up 0.5%), continues the trend recorded in the 2019 calendar year and reflects the initial impact of a coordinated industry effort to combat fraud associated with online transactions, the largest category of card payments fraud.
The FY20 drop in card fraud translates to a rate of 56 cents per USD 1,0000 - down from 66 cents per USD 1,000 in FY19.
The FY20 data released shows overall card fraud fell to USD 447.2 million, down from USD 528.8 million (FY19), while CNP fraud - affecting mainly online transactions - dropped by 14.0% to USD 392.4 million.
CNP fraud, which occurs when valid card details are stolen and used to make purchases or other payments without the card being present, usually online, accounted for 87.7% of all card fraud in FY20.
Other fraud categories also declined during FY20, with lost and stolen card fraud down 28.5% to USD 30.8 million and counterfeit/skimming fraud down by almost a quarter to USD 14.0 million, continuing the long-term downward trend for this type of fraud.
The FY20 data includes the first full year in operation of the industry CNP Fraud Mitigation Framework, which came into effect on 1 July 2019. The CNP Fraud Mitigation Framework encourages merchants to tighten their customer authentication and accelerate uptake of secure technologies offered by banks, card schemes and payment service providers/gateways such as real-time monitoring, machine learning and tokenization.
