EMV migration has been primarily driving the world market towards a common payment standard and is the main tool to fight increasing fraud cases globally. Payment associations set EMV migration deadlines or liability shift time lines for all key regions. This is pushing banks and merchants to migrate to smart cards to avoid the risk of fraud passing on to them.
New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, World Credit and Debit Fraud, reveals losses to card fraud totaling $7.9 billion in 2004 and estimates to reach $15.5 billion in 2009.

“However, many regions with low fraud levels like the United States and Australia lack a valid business case to make the huge investment for upgrading their existing payment infrastructure to accept chip cards,” says Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst V. Aravindh. “This situation could change as fraud migrates to these countries from neighboring regions who have secured themselves with EMV.”
Last year, cross border fraud increased rapidly in countries like Germany and Italy since the UK and France are well on their way to fully implementing EMV. Similarly, ATM fraud has seen a surge in the United States in the last year with Canada and Latin America securing their debit cards by chip enabling them.
The last few years have seen a phenomenal growth in the number of phishing sites globally. Phishing involves falsified e-mails being sent out to numerous user accounts with the request to identify themselves to the credit institution or online shops, etc. The fraudster collects PINs, passwords and credit card details from their unsuspecting victims. With the number of retailers who offer online purchasing services to their customers showing an exponential increase, it is a big challenge to retain consumer confidence in the face of mounting fraud through this medium.
“In 2004, card association MasterCard came up with a Stop Identity Theft campaign to combat this growing menace of online fraud and with the help of authorities in countries worldwide, shut down more than 1,500 phishing sites,” says Aravindh. “The United States accounts for more than half the illegal sites on the Internet and losses to online fraud are greater than $500 million annually.”
Card associations like Visa and MasterCard are taking preventive measures to win back consumer confidence on online payments. This includes putting systems in place like “SecureCode” by MasterCard and “Verified by Visa” authentication for Visa cards. Further, cardholders need to follow the best practices guidelines laid down by banks and card associations and be extremely wary while making payments through the Internet.


If you are interested in a virtual brochure, which provides manufacturers, end-users, and other industry participants with an overview of the latest analysis of the World Credit and Debit Fraud then send an e-mail to Tori Foster - Corporate Communications at tori.foster@frost.com with the following information: your full name, company name, title, telephone number, e-mail address, city, state and country. We will send you the information via email upon receipt of the above information.