Wednesday 9th January, 2013

According to a new Europol report, payment card fraud in Europe is pulling in around 1.5 billion euros a year for the organised crime groups involved.

Whilst CNP (card-not-present) fraud is on an upward trend as transactions do not benefit from the same security enhancements as Chip and PIN cards. The reports mentions, "Around 60% of losses to card fraud, totalling around 900 million euros, were caused by card-not-present fraud."

The wide adoption of EMV (Europay, MasterCard and Visa) technology in the EU has been a key driver for reducing domestic ‘card-present’ (CP) fraud. Chip and PIN technology offers stronger security features than conventional magnetic strips.

The level of illegal card-present transactions carried out overseas has seen a sharp increase as criminals target the weak points of the system by committing crimes using non-EMV compliant cash machines and payment card terminals in non-European countries.

Organised crime groups upgrade their criminal techniques relatively quickly, producing devices to bypass the latest anti-skimming technology and exploring other ways to rip off EU consumers and industry.

Since the vast majority of such criminal activities take place online in multiple countries, often involving numerous parties, the most effective law enforcement solution is to task specialised cybercrime teams with such cases.

In 2012, Europol provided support to EU law enforcement authorities in hundreds of international investigations into payment card fraud.

To tackle the EU’s fight against cybercrime a new European Cybercrime Centre (EC) has been set-up. It will support Member States and the European Union’s institutions in building operational and analytical capacity for investigations and cooperation with international partners.