Chip and PIN slaps face-to-face fraud

Incidents of face-to-face credit and debit card fraud have tumbled by 67 per cent since the introduction of the chip and PIN standard 24 months ago.

But card fraud overall has only dipped by a few per cent according to payments industry organisation Apacs, with much of it migrating to card-not-present (CNP) fraud and overseas transactions.

According to Apacs cards and fraud control manager of operations, Martin Lewis, and head of cards technical unit David Baker, there are now 133 million chip and PIN cards in operation, supported by 900,000 sales terminals and more than 61,000 ATMs.

Speaking at the Retail Fraud conference in London this week, they confirmed 94 per cent of face-to-face payments are now PIN verified.

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This means that losses over the period through face-to-face card fraud have been reduced from £220m to around £70m. However, Apacs admits CNP fraud is up by 41 per cent and much of the card fraud has migrated to countries that have not adopted chip and PIN.

But this doesn't mean fraudsters have given up on face-to-face card fraud completely, with 'shoulder surfing' to detect customers' PIN numbers still being attempted.

Lewis said: "We've even seen a case where a camera was hidden in a charity box at the counter to capture PINs."

Baker added: "We need to examine the prevalence of PIN shields on PIN pads and would like to see manufacturers getting on board on this. We are also looking at ways to educate shoppers to shield the pad with their hand if they can."