A report by the European Association for Secure Transactions (EAST) revealed that card fraud losses at payment terminals have hit the lowest level since 2005.
The European Payment Terminal Crime Report covers the first half of this year and unveils a total loss of €107m ($123m).
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The overall decrease in card fraud losses is said to be driven by card skimming decreases. Card skimming was cut down from €118m to €104m.
Furthermore, the report revealed a 43% reduction in overall payment terminal fraud, decreasing from 11,934 to 6,790, including a 19% decrease in total card skimming incidents from 1,221 to 985.
Reasons for the losses
EAST executive director Lachlan Gunn said: “The significant drop in card skimming incidents and losses reflects the continued effectiveness of EMV, as well as the work that has been put in by payment terminal deployers and card issuers with regard to counter-measures such as geo-blocking, fraud monitoring capabilities and fraud detection.
“Europe led the way with EMV, which is now a global standard, and all stakeholders in the payment card industry are benefiting from the increased security.”
The report also unveiled a 46% slump in logical attacks against ATMs. As a result, this led to a decrease of 83% in associated losses.
However, physical attacks at ATMs rose by 21%, resulting in €15.1m of related losses. A 26% surge was observed in ram raid attacks and ATM burglary, while ATM explosive attacks increased by 2%.
The average cash loss for each explosive or gas attack is estimated to be €14,748. Furthermore, the figure for a robbery is €14,613 and for a ram raid or burglary attack is €12,275.
