The nation’s banks stopped more than $11 billion in fraudulent transactions in 2014, according to ABA’s 2015 Deposit Account Fraud Survey Report released today. Fraud against bank deposit accounts cost the industry $1.9 billion in total losses, an increase from $1.7 billion in 2012.
“Banks’ sophisticated prevention systems and customer vigilance successfully stopped 85 percent of fraud attempts in 2014,” said Doug Johnson, ABA SVP for payments and cybersecurity. “We saw an increase in fraud losses in 2014 most likely due to the number of large-scale retailer data breaches, which resulted in a significant increase in attempted debit card fraud.”
The survey — which sampled 101 banks of varying sizes — found that debit card fraud accounted for 66 percent of industry loss, with the majority of cases involving counterfeit cards, card-not-present transactions or lost or stolen cards. Check fraud was the next most common fraud type at 32 percent. Online banking and electronic transfers — including wires and ACH — accounted for 2 percent of industry loss.
Johnson added that banks’ efforts to invest in effective online fraud prevention systems likely contributed to a decrease in the number of online banking customers affected by fraud — fewer than one in every 1,000 were victims in 2014.
