There has been a steady increase in the searches for ‘payment fraud’ over the past five years, according to FYST. The one-stop payments consultancy for e-commerce businesses has revealed the fraud hotspots in each continent based on search-term analysis. Over the past 12 months, the largest search volumes proportional to population size have been Singapore, the UK, South Africa, Ireland and the US.
Evgeniy Ivantsov, CMO FYST, said: “This spike corresponds with the uptake of chip-and-pin payments in the UK. The innovation was designed to reduce incidents of payment fraud, since the embedded chip offers more secure storage compared to the magnetic strip on previous cards. But search volume peaked again just last month.
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“This could be linked to the first APP scams performance report by PSR. But it also points to a growing interest from consumers in reducing fraud through innovations such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and open banking.”
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Going back further, over the past five years, the situation is remarkably similar to the past year. But the order changes slightly to the UK taking the top spot. It is followed by Ireland, South Africa, Singapore, and US. When considering search volume since 2004, the order remains exactly the same. This could indicative high levels of payment fraud, higher awareness of the issue, increased interest in the topic, or – most likely – a combination of all three.
Ivantsov added: “Fraud is a global problem. The 2023 data shows that phishing, pharming, whaling, and ‘friendly fraud’ still prevail. It therefore seems appropriate we highlight these hotspots during International Fraud Awareness Week.
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By GlobalData“Payment fraud trends and techniques vary geographically due to differences in payment infrastructure, regulation, law enforcement, and customer behaviours around the world. Understanding the regional specificities and global hotspots for different fraud types is crucial for developing effective fraud prevention and mitigation strategies.
By understanding geographically-specific fraud search interest, stakeholders can develop targeted solutions suited to their locations and support strategic allocation of anti-fraud resources. With the global fraud problem continuing to grow in scale and complexity, it is crucial that we improve our understanding of where and how fraud is concentrating so we can create effective barriers against it.”
