The European Banking Authority (EBA) and the European Central Bank (ECB) have released their latest joint assessment of payment fraud across the EEA.
In essence, the report indicates that overall fraud rates have remained generally stable despite a rise in total losses. According to the 2025 report, fraud accounted for roughly 0.002% of the total value of payment transactions in 2024, unchanged from previous years, even as the monetary impact increased.
Data collected from payment service providers show that the total value of fraudulent transactions rose to EUR 4.2 billion in 2024, up from EUR 3.5 billion in 2023 and EUR 3.4 billion in 2022. The figures are based on semi-annual reporting between 2022 and 2024 and cover a range of payment instruments, including credit transfers, card payments, cash withdrawals, direct debits and e-money transactions.
Strong authentication and changing fraud patterns
EBA and ECB officials note that strong customer authentication (SCA), mandated under the revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) and in force since 2020, continues to limit fraud in areas it was designed to address. Transactions verified using SCA were consistently less exposed to fraud, particularly in card payments. Card transactions without SCA, especially those involving recipients outside the EEA, showed significantly higher fraud levels, reflecting the absence of equivalent legal requirements in those jurisdictions.
However, the report also points to changing criminal tactics. New fraud schemes increasingly rely on deceiving users into authorising transactions themselves or exploiting exemptions from SCA. These methods have reduced the protective effect of authentication for certain payment types, notably credit transfers, where the deterrent impact of SCA was less pronounced.
Losses varied considerably by instrument and geography. In 2024, fraud linked to credit transfers reached EUR 2.2 billion, a 16% increase year on year, while fraud involving EU- or EEA-issued cards rose by 29% to EUR 1.329 billion. For credit transfers, users absorbed around 85% of losses, largely due to scams prompting legitimate payment initiation.
