Criminals steal cards and make purchases before the cards are reported missing and blocked, or use devices to intercept messages sent by cards to steal data, enabling them to commit fraud. Unlike chip and PIN transactions, contactless payments can be made without additional authentication, such as a PIN. Under current rules, payments of up to GBP 30 can be made using the technology.
Action Fraud figures revealed that the average theft through contactless fraud was GBP 657 in 2018, compared with GBP 493 in 2017. Many thefts involve small amounts, so users may not notice them immediately.
Contactless is overtaking chip and PIN as the most popular way of paying for goods and service because of its convenience. According to recent figures from payment processing company Worldpay, more card payments were made using contactless technology than chip and PIN in the UK over the 12 months from June 2017 to June 2018. It revealed that, after increasing by 30% on the previous year, contactless payments were the most used card payments in shops.
UK Finance, which represents hundreds of banks, said in a statement that contactless fraud is low with robust security features in place in every card, and no contactless fraud has been recorded on cards still in the possession of the original owner. Customers are fully protected against any losses and will never be left out of pocket in the unlikely event they are the victim of this type of fraud, unlike if they lose cash.
Every day we send out a free e-mail with the most important headlines of the last 24 hours.
Subscribe now