On 1 August 2024, the European Banking Authority (EBA) and the European Central Bank (ECB) issued a joint report which assesses the latest payment data reported to these authorities under Article 96(6) of the revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2).

The joint report:

  • Covers semi-annual data reported for the three reference periods H1 2022, H2 2022 and H1 2023.
  • Focuses on the payment instruments of credit transfers, direct debits, card payments (from an EU/EEA issuing perspective), cash withdrawals and e-money transactions.
  • Data covers all EU/EEA countries that reported the full time series.
  • Analyses total payment transactions and the subset of fraudulent transactions, both in value and volume terms.
  • Provides more detailed analyses on specific topics such as the main fraud types and the application of strong customer authentication (SCA), as well as some geographical and country-level analyses.

Key messages in the joint report include:

  • Payment fraud reported by the industry across the EEA amounted to EUR 4.3 billion in the year 2022 and EUR 2.0 billion in the first half of 2023.
  • Most payment fraud in value terms was related to credit transfers and card payments, across all three reference periods analysed.
  • SCA was applied for the majority of electronic payments in value terms, especially for credit transfers (around 77%).
  • In general, SCA-authenticated transactions showed lower fraud rates than non-SCA transactions, especially for card payments.
  • Fraud rates for card payments turned out to be significantly (about ten times) higher when the counterpart is located outside the EEA, where the application of SCA may not be requested.
  • The adoption of the regulatory technical standards for SCA and common and secure open standards of communication has had a positive effect on reducing fraudulent payments, especially for transactions conducted within the EEA.

The EBA and the ECB will continue to closely monitor developments in payment fraud, using data collected under the PSD2 and the ECB Regulation on payments statistics.