Epidemic of Credit Card Fraud is Growing at Alarming Rates

Credit card fraud in the United States

By Seth McGinn, Marketing —

For every $100 of credit card spending throughout the world, $.07 is spent fraudulently. This may seem like a minor issue, but not when we total up the amount of card spending that occurs throughout the world in a year, giving us a whopping $22 billion in fraudulent spending. Not only is it a shocking amount of money, but it is also growing at a stunning 45% every year.

Prevent Credit Card Fraud

Bankers, merchants, and in the United States are victims of about $8.5 billion of this global amount, creating huge losses for them and their shareholders. At the growing rate, the US could be up to over $12 billion in losses by 2018. Obviously, this is bad news. In considering what this means for businesses and individuals living in an increasing digital age, we need to ask ourselves 2 questions: (1) how does credit card fraud occur, and (2) what can be done to prevent this happening to me or my business?

Counterfeit

First, credit card fraud can happen in a variety of different ways. Most commonly, it occurs when accounts are compromised through counterfeit cards at the point of sell, card-not-present transactions, or lost and stolen cards. Increasingly, fraud is occurring through card-not-present transactions where account information can be compromised. Accountants or clerks, who have special access to account information can be the culprits that can often go undetected as they siphon funds through fraudulent use of account information. Phishing, social engineering, and online account hackers can also be responsible for fraudulent transactions that cost businesses, card users, and the economy as a whole. So how can we prevent these outcomes?

Watch Your Accounts

Internet security, password security, and even identity insurance are all different ways we can try to mitigate card fraud. Also, we must be careful who we trust with sensitive financial information, especially as businesses. Accountants and clerks handle highly sensitive information in order to perform the necessary transactions needed for the business to operate. With almost $9 billion being lost every year in the US, it is crucial that businesses carefully monitor their credit transactions, so as to not fall victim to potentially huge losses in credit card fraud. We would be wise, as businesses and individuals, to closely watch our accounts and those who are close to our accounts so that we are not a part of the growing, global epidemic of credit card fraud.

Protect Your Wallet

Converus is a company that is working to combat fraud in the workplace through its innovative development of EyeDetect. EyeDetect is lie detection technology that measures pupil dilation as a means of detecting deception. Across the world, businesses are using this new technology to screen employees for fraudulent conduct in the hiring process, and using it to identify guilty persons in relation to incidents of fraud in the workplace.

Photo courtesy of Pixabay.