The changing nature of fraud

The reduction in fraud levels seen in Australia once again reiterate the potential savings that can be delivered if countries roll out EMV technology, and it will be interesting to see if the current non-EMV countries such as the US reconsider their stance as these stories continue to come through.

However, the rise in CNP fraud in Australia shows how agile the banks have to be to try to stay one step ahead of the fraudster - once one fraud channel becomes more difficult to use or less lucrative for criminals, they soon turn to another, weaker link to steal funds.

CNP fraud, including that perpetrated through online shopping activity, requires banks to use a different set of tools and techniques to identify suspicious activity, such as so called "out of band" communication like SMS messages to communicate with customers, and much more detailed customer and account profiling so that any unusual activity can be flagged as suspicious and assessed in real time to try to identify and prevent fraud at the first attempt.