Fraudulent noncash payments increased sharply from 2012 to 2015, according to the latest Federal Reserve Payments Study data.
Specifically, fraud related to noncash payments rose 37 percent from $6.1 billion in 2012 to $8.3 billion in 2015. This outpaces the rate of growth of noncash payments over this period – which rose 12 percent from $161.2 trillion to $180.3 trillion. The rise in fraud cases was driven primarily by card fraud. Card fraud accounted for more than three-fourths of noncash payments fraud in 2015, up from two-thirds in 2012. Further, check fraud declined to $710 million in 2015 from $1.1 billion in 2012.
The study also found that there were about 46 cents of payments fraud for every $10,000 of payments in 2015, compared to 38 cents of payments fraud for every $10,000 of payments in 2012. Also, the value of fraudulent card payments and automated teller machine (ATM) withdrawals jumped from approximately $4 billion in 2012 to $6.5 billion in 2015.
The study also revealed that the trend is continuing. Fraudulent card payments increased from 63.5 million in 2015 to 71.4 million in 2016. Specifically, fraudulent debit card payments rose from 4.3 for every 10,000 payments in 2015 to 4.6 in 2016, while fraudulent credit card payments were flat at 11.7 for every 10,000 payments over that period.
However, fraud using counterfeit cards declined from $3 billion in 2015 to $2.6 billion in 2016, due in large part to the use of cards with microchips.