The latest report issued by the European Central Bank highlighting card fraud has announced that the total value of card fraud within the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) amounted to €1.44 billion in 2013, which represented an increase of 8% from 2012.
Although other forms of card fraud are reportedly declining, card-not-present (CNP) fraud, of which chargeback fraud represents a significant proportion, is on the rise and continuing to pose a real threat to merchants. Compared with 2012, CNP has become an even more important channel for fraudsters and accounted for 66% of the total value of fraud, whereas ATMs and Point-of-Sale (POS) terminals have become less of a focus.
With the growth in ecommerce encouraging more and more CNP transactions, the increased threat of online fraud is expected, as fraud follows opportunity. Greater levels of CNP fraud also brings higher levels of chargebacks as customers and merchants suffer.
Statistics released by the UK Cards Association last week revealed that total card spending rose to £51.1 billion in May 2015, which was up by 0.8% during the month. The report also showed that during the previous month consumers made a staggering 124 million online purchases, an increase of 1.5% on April.
When businesses don’t have the knowledge to tackle chargeback claims efficiently and effectively, they leave themselves vulnerable to avoidable costs. Preventative solutions give merchants the power to successfully mitigate the chargeback risk, while helping challenge chargebacks that do hit. Once merchants have the right tools and education, they can challenge, prevent and win more chargeback disputes as well as fight the rising CNP fraud threat.
Click here to download our free chargeback playbook, which identifies the most common pitfalls merchants need to look out for in relation to CNP chargebacks as well as best practices to help reduce the risk.
