Preventive messages and warnings from banking institutions are not enough to prevent customers from being deceived, so technology will take over: from October, new means will be implemented to combat payment fraud through identity theft, which continues to develop against the tide of all payment scams.
In its latest annual report, published on Tuesday 10 September, the Observatory of the Security of Means of Payment (OSMP), a public body chaired by Denis Beau, Deputy Governor of the Banque de France, notes a general stability in fraud involving means of payment, cashless payments, i.e. excluding coins and notes, despite the continued increase in their use.
In total, this fraud represented 1.195 billion euros in 2023, an amount that increased by only 0.2%, while the number of transactions taken into account increased by 5.2%, to 32.2 billion.
The payment card, which retains its title of preferred means of payment for the French, with 64.6% of transactions (+ 1.3 points compared to 2022), certainly represents 41% of this amount, but has a slightly lower fraud rate at 0.053%, or €53 defrauded for every €100,000 of transactions, the lowest level ever recorded by the OSMP. A development that confirms the effectiveness of the “strong identification” techniques required by the European directive on means of payment PSD2.
Sending suspicious checks
The rate of cheque fraud, mainly linked to the theft of cheque books on maritime circuits, remains high, at 0.078%. But the amounts involved are falling, because the use of cheques is decreasing and because banks are fighting more effectively against the delivery of suspicious cheques: the permanent or temporary blocking of transactions made it possible to prevent 222 million euros of fraudulent transactions in 2023, notes the report. OSMP.
Fraud in transfers remains very low compared to the amounts exchanged (0.001%), despite the rapid adoption of instant transfers (+46% in volume in 2023). But this means of payment remains highly exposed to “social engineering” techniques, i.e. manipulation of bank customers, the most commonly used by fraudsters to bypass authentication and prevention mechanisms and to collect personal data.
Fraud by manipulation thus accounted for €379 million in 2023, or 32% of the total amount of fraudulent payments, compared to 22% in 2021. Of particular note is the “false advisor” fraud, in which the fraudster poses as a bank employee on the phone, with the aim of putting pressure on the customer to reveal their IDs or make payments themselves. A mechanism that has long been facilitated by “spoofing” techniques, the usurpation of the bank’s telephone number, which lends credibility to the fraudster’s pitch, or the use of “mirror sites” reproducing those of a public service or an online merchant.
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