The Central Bank of Cyprus has today released the first statistical report on Payment Fraud for the second half of 2024, which provides an overview of fraudulent non-cash payment transactions in Cyprus across the main payment services (a) credit transfers, (b) direct debits, (c) card payments, (d) e-money payments, (e) cheques, and (f) money remittances. Fraudulent non-cash payment transactions are analyzed by geographical area of the counterpart PSP, whereas card payments are further broken down by the initiation method (i.e. at a physical POS or online). The release also provides useful information on the application of strong customer authentication requirements to card payments.
Information is collected from all payment service providers (PSPs) licensed in Cyprus i.e. Credit Institutions, E-Money Institutions and Payment Institutions.
The main remarks of the Statistical release for the second half of 2024 in Cyprus are summarized below:
- Fraudulent payments in Cyprus showed an upward trend, although remaining at low levels in both absolute and relative (i.e. fraud as a share of the total payments) terms for each payment service compared to the euro averages.
- Card fraud is the most common form of fraudulent payment transactions (94%) in volume terms, while most fraudulent payments in value terms came primarily from credit transfers (60%) and secondly from card payments (39%).
- Types of fraud vary, depending on the payment methods used. In most fraudulent credit transfers (75%), the account holders are being tricked to make the payment to the fraudster, while in most fraudulent card payments (99%), the fraudster obtains customer information in the absence of consent by the payer.
- Cross-border fraudulent payments are much higher than domestic fraudulent payments across all payment services. It is noteworthy that card fraud was about 25 times more likely to occur in cross-border payments rather than in Cyprus.
- Strong customer authentication rules have shown a positive effect in reducing the risk of fraud for card payments.
- While card payments were predominantly related to card payments at a physical POS (i.e. at the store) rather than remotely (i.e. online), card fraud was almost exclusively related to online payments for Cyprus.
The report will be published on a bi-annual basis and is available in English and Greek.