South Africa registers an overall decrease in card fraud

According to the study, debit card fraud decreased by 8.5% while credit card fraud increased by 1%. Lost and/or stolen credit card fraud saw a 44.5% increase and accounted for 5.9% of overall gross fraud losses in 2017, with 76.1% of fraud occurring in South Africa. Criminals mostly stole, swopped or installed card entrapment devices at ATMs and then shoulder surfed victims to obtain their PINs.

The year 2017 also saw a significant decrease in counterfeit card fraud, continuing the trend for 2016. Counterfeit debit card fraud saw a decrease of 32.2%, while counterfeit credit card fraud decreased by 23.2%. These decreases can be attributed to the robust mitigation strategies implemented by the banks.

Industry statistics indicate that credit card related card-not-present (CNP) fraud is still the leading contributor to gross fraud losses in South Africa, and showed an increase of 7.4% from the previous year, accounting for 72.9% of the losses on SA-issued credit cards. CNP debit card fraud showed a more significant increase of 60.7% due to certain banks allowing online CNP transactions on debit cards.