Card-not-present
fraud rose from $256.5 million in 2014 to $322.7 million this year according to
a new report by the Australian Payments Clearing Association (APCA).
Card-not-present fraud occurs when details of credit or debit cards are entered online, over the phone or by post.
This method has become favoured by criminals because it is difficult for a merchant to verify that the card owner is authorising a purchase.
The interim payments fraud data release found that card-not-present fraud accounted for 80 per cent of all card fraud during the 12 months. Australians spent a total of $672.5 billion on their cards during this time.
APCA CEO Chris Hamilton said that banks are taking steps to extend the authentication techniques used for online banking to the card-not-present space to reduce the risk of fraud when shopping over the Internet.
“If you use your card online, it‘s vital that you take advantage of all the security features already offered by your financial institution, such as one-time passwords,” he said.
Meanwhile, fraud on lost or stolen cards dropped from $33.1 million to $31.8 million while counterfeit/skimming fraud fell slightly from $42.1 million to $39.2 million.
“Financial institutions and law enforcement have been working together to target skimming at ATMs and in taxis and this, together with the industry’s progressive roll-out of chip-reading at ATMs, is starting to reflect in the fraud data,” Hamilton said.
“Cardholders can help these efforts by always protecting their PINs and treating their cards like cash.”