Top 10 European countries for credit card fraud in 2022

Since March 2020, consumer spending habits have changed significantly, and that includes the way we use our credit cards online. Almost immediately, fraudsters tapped into this and found new ways of taking advantage of this with devious scams and cons that caused a drastic rise in fraud cases.

To find out where Europe’s credit card fraud capital is, Merchant Machine researched 19 countries in Europe, analysing the amount of money lost to fraud, the level of fraud risk, and more to find out where this crime is the most prevalent.

Some of the key findings include:

• Ireland is the credit fraud capital of Europe
• The UK follows Ireland in second place

Ireland Tops the List as the Card Capital of Europe

Out of all of the 19 countries  researched, Ireland loses the second highest amount of money to fraud per 1,000 cards with €5,145 and each month, there are 180 searches for the terms ‘credit card fraud’ and ‘report credit card fraud’.

In Ireland, 88 of every 1,000 inhabitants becomes a victim of credit card fraud, which is the third highest amount compared with the other countries in the list, which means for every 1,000 inhabitants, €7,949 is stolen by fraudsters.

In addition to this, almost a quarter (25%) of transactions made in Ireland are made across national borders. More than three quarters of those transactions were fraudulent, which is a higher percentage than both the UK and France.

UK has the highest number of fraud cases per inhabitant

The UK ranks second on the list with the most fraud cases per 1,000 inhabitants with 123 and the highest value per 1,000 inhabitants at €10,414.

Over an average month in the UK, there are 170 Google searches for ‘report credit card fraud’ and 1,000 searches for ‘credit card fraud’.

Following closely behind the UK is France, which has the highest fraud value and volume per 1,000 cards. This means that for every 1,000 credit cards in France, there are 83 cases of fraud which results in a total loss of €5,521.

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