The US named as the top country for UK credit card fraud

Not too long ago France was the country which was known to be the worst for UK credit card fraud. However now that buck seems to have been passed to the US where instances of UK credit card fraud have risen quite dramatically.

The fraudsters in the US have been using UK credit and debit cards and converting them into cash. The main reason for this is apparently the lack of security in the US. In the UK there are chip and pin machines but in the US there isn’t anything like that. So it is a lot easier for fraudsters to get away with using another persons details.

The figures are actually quite shocking and it shows that UK credit and debit card fraud in the US has gone up by over 100%. That really is a dramatic figure and the most demoralising thing is that the figure only represents the first six months of the year. So within a whole year if the fraud continued to rise at the same rate then it would have risen by over 200% and that is quite a lot!

The main way in which fraudsters get the details of UK consumers, is by copying the magnetic strip on the credit cards. They then also get the Pin number of that card and they can then do whatever they like with the details; usually clearing a person’s bank account or running up their credit card account to the limit. It is not overly difficult for them to get this information and they usually do it by attaching skimming machines to cash machines. They read all of the details of a person’s card and they then copy those details which the fraudster can access later.

It is not all bad news however. As even tough this type of fraud has risen dramatically, there has been a decrease in domestic fraud by over 10%.