SABRIC, the South African Banking Risk Information Centre, has released its annual crime stats for 2019

Overall gross losses in 2019 on card transactions in SA stood at R428.6m, a 2% decrease compared to 2018. The counterfeiting of cards decreased by 44.8% for credit cards and 34.8% for debit cards. Digital banking fraud incidents increased by 20%. But gross fraud losses on banking apps increased by 1% despite a massive drive by banks to increase the number of transactions processed on apps. Credit card and debit card fraud increased by 20.5%, although this should be seen against the growth of the credit card payment ecosystem which has seen a rise in the number of credit card transactions processed by banks, together with increases in the number of card holders and merchants, which would have contributed to more incidents. The leading contributor to gross card fraud losses has remained ‘card not present’ fraud (CNP), for example, when your card number is used fraudulently by someone else to make a purchase at a shop while the physical card is in your possession. 66.6% of all fraud on SA issued credit cards took place on merchant devices in a foreign country. South African ecommerce merchants largely comply with 3D Secure whereas merchants abroad do not necessarily use 3D Secure. Click HERE to access the SABRIC Annual Crime Stats 2019 publication.