In 2017 card payments totalled £13.2bn, overtaking for the first time the payments in cash at £13.1bn. Dynamics driving this surge include NFC tap & go technology that has been adopted not just by young early adopters by also by over 50% of the over 5’s and by growth in prepaid cards that appeals greatly to the growing population of debt-averse consumers who are namely the Generation X’rs.
Cash is now the second most common form of payment and is predicted to make up only 36% of transactions in 10 years from now. Contactless payments increased by 96% between 2016 and 2017.
Could we end up going cash-free? Sweden is expected to become the world’s first truly cashless society. A recent study by Stockholm’s KTH Royal Institute of Technology has predicted cash could be extinct by 2030.
However, as the number of debit card transactions increases so does the fraud losses reported on those cards, in the UK £618.0 million was reported lost in 2016 a 9% increase from £567.5 million in 2015; the fifth consecutive year of increases and the 2017 figures are due out shortly.
One way for retailers to mitigate against the rise in debit card fraud is to adopt a better screening process for customers who match to high-risk transaction patterns. Of course, not all of these customers are fraudsters and merchants want to accept these transactions.
HooYu Identify is an identity confirmation platform for online businesses to verify customer identity to be able to approve and accept as many transactions as possible. HooYu Identify offers traditional identity databases checks with can be used in isolation or in combination with digital footprint analysis, document authentication, geolocation or facial biometrics. For high risk transactions, merchants can also use the HooYu Identify identity scoring feature, enabling retailers to implement better card fraud prevention within their online shopping process.
Another way retailers can curb the rise of card fraud is to understand how the fraudsters are operating and who they are working with. HooYu Investigate is a unique data visualisation service that enables retail fraud investigators to investigate a subject and instantly build intelligence on them. Do they live where they say they do, are they linked to known high-risk addresses or to other known fraudsters? HooYu Investigate uses multiple inbuilt data sets and can instantly find connections between card fraudsters, enabling for faster more effective fraud prevention.
For more information on how HooYu can help you prevent card fraud please email marketing@hooyu.com.
