A latest survey has revealed that losses on point-of-sale transactions totalled an estimated $850m in 2017, a decline 5.5% compared to 2016.

The 2018 Debit Issuer Study was performed by Oliver Wyman on behalf of Discover Financial Services’ debit/ATM network PULSE.

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The decline in the debit card fraud is due to the nearly complete transition to EMV chip technology.

According to PULSE, card-not-present transactions could be more vulnerable as they lack authentication or PIN protection. While such transactions constitute up to 21% of transaction volume, they contributed 44% of net fraud.

PULSE vice-president of fraud and risk management Jim Lerdal said: “Survey respondents reported that the costs of this fraud are high, amounting to 10.5 cents for every card-not-present transaction, of which issuers bear 1.7 cents, on average.

“The remaining 8.8 cents constitute losses borne by merchants and cardholder claims that are not charged back.”

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Findings also showed continued growth of consumer debit use which led to improvements in overall debit performance last year. This bolstered debit performance is driven by increased penetration rate, card activation and usage.

A 1% increase was registered in both penetration rate and card activation. Meanwhile, debit cards were used to make 23.7 purchases per month last year as against 22.9 purchases in 2016.

In addition, the survey indicated rise in cardholder enrolment for mobile wallets but transactions per enrolled card were flat.

Around 86% of responding issuers supported at least one mobile payment option, an increase from 74% in the previous study.

Fifty-nine financial institutions, including large banks, credit unions and community banks, participated in the survey. A total of around 148 million debit cards have been issued by the participants.

For survey respondents, improving digital capabilities was the main priority. They are also focussed on offering tools to help customers manage debit card activity.