laura_hailstone@vnu.co.uk

Total UK card fraud losses fell by £65m last year from £504.8m in 2004 to £439.4m, the latest figures from the Association of Payment Clearing Services (APACS) has revealed.

APACS attributed the fall to chip and PIN which has already resulted in a reduction of nearly £60m in combined counterfeit and lost and stolen card fraud losses – a fall of 24 per cent - and in mail non-receipt fraud, which fell by 45 per cent.

The only area of card fraud to rise was card-not-present (CNP) fraud, which rose 21 per cent in 2005 from £150.8m to £183.2m. However, the rate of increase had fallen for the first time since 2003 said APACS.

Sandra Quinn, director of corporate communications at APACS, said: “Seeing card fraud losses come down is cast-iron proof that chip and PIN is doing its job. Back in 2002 we forecast that fraud would have risen to £800m in 2005 if we didn’t make the move to chip and PIN so it’s heartening to see total losses well beneath this figure.

"While our cards are safer than ever before, the fraudsters clearly aren’t going to give up so neither will we. Now chip and PIN is in place the banking industry is discussing how to leverage chip and PIN to better protect card-not-present transactions and we hope this will lead to progress later this year about what this means for cardholders and retailers," she added.