Launched at Retail Risk – London, part of the worldwide risk and loss prevention conference series, the UK Retail Fraud Survey 2016 has found that most, 83pc of retailers highlighted that credit cards had the highest proportion of fraud of all payment types this year.
Published by Retail Knowledge and sponsored for the second year by WIS International, an inventory and data collection services contract company, the survey covers retail transactions accounting for some 32pc of all UK retail sales online and offline through 34,950 stores across the UK.
The biggest area of online loss remains, overwhelmingly, from the fraudulent use of credit cards (51pc). Despite a small decrease from last year’s figure of 55pc, this is a multi-billion pound problem for consumers as well as retailers, because ultimately the cost of fraud is recouped through increased prices in the stores, according to the survey authors.
The previous report showed that 15pc of those that trade online reported that they do not have any concerns or had not had a recent online fraud event. The 2015 survey remarked that perhaps, as they were new to online, these stores had been a little complacent and that does seem to have been the case as this year that number has shrunk, to 4pc.
Paul Bessant of Retail Knowledge, said: “It is no surprise that credit card fraud is the biggest area of online loss again this year. However, whilst retailers’ spending on online fraud prevention has doubled in the last two years, and this has met with some success in specific areas such as fraudulent credit card use, our research underlines the concerns of many, that overall they could be losing the war against cyber criminals.”
