Fraudsters steal GBP 9bn from Britains small businesses

Of more than 1,000 small-to-medium sized businesses (SMEs), almost half had received a suspicious invoice or been a victim of invoice fraud in the last 12 months.

The average company loses GBP 1,658 per year to invoice fraud, and one is six companies estimates that fraud has cost them more than GBP 5,000 in the past year.

Many SMEs owners no longer trust in phone orders and they prefer to process all payments using credit cards for security and to verify the identity of each customer using online tools.

Pauline Smith, head of the UK’s national centre for reporting fraud and internet crime, said Incidents of invoice fraud are underreported and it is difficult to know the true scale of this fraud type.