Payment Fraud Is Like a Game of Whac-a-Mole - Are You Keeping Up?

Issue 722: 10 June 2025

UK Finance’s recently published Annual Fraud Report 2025 demonstrates some progress as well as challenges in the fight against payment fraud, but the net effect of fraud in the UK (in 2024) was:

• £1.17 billion was stolen through fraud in 2024 (broadly unchanged from 2023).

• £1.45 billion of unauthorised fraud was prevented by the industry, up 16% from 2023 and equivalent to 67p in every £1 attempted.

• 3.31 million confirmed cases, an increase of 12% versus 2023.

Source: UK Finance

Read the full report from UK Finance: here

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A game of Whac-A-Mole

Whac-A-Mole is a popular arcade game where players use a mallet to hit moles that pop up from holes. It's also a term used metaphorically to describe situations where problems or issues keep reappearing after being seemingly fixed.

Like payment fraud where in 2024:

+ Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud, where victims are manipulated by criminals into sending them money, has fallen, both the total amount lost and the overall number of cases.

- other types of fraud, notably remote purchase fraud, have increased. This demonstrates that criminals change tactics and, closing one vulnerability in isolation only leads them adapting and exploiting others.

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Unauthorised Fraud

In an unauthorised fraudulent transaction, the account holder themselves does not provide authorisation for the payment to proceed, and the transaction is carried out by a third-party.

UK Finance figures waiver unauthorised fraud on credit, debit and other payment cards, cheques and remote banking channels.

• Unauthorised fraud losses were £722 million in 2024 an increase of two per cent from 2023.

• There were 3.13 million confirmed cases of unauthorised fraud reported in 2024, a 14 per cent rise on the total reported in 2023.

• The industry prevented a further £1.45 billion of unauthorised fraud – equivalent to 67p in every £1 of attempted unauthorised fraud being stopped without a loss occurring.

Source: UK Finance

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Authorised fraud

In an authorised fraudulent transaction, the account holder themselves is tricked into sending money to a fraudster posing as a genuine payee.

• Authorised fraud losses were £450 million in 2024 a decrease of two per cent from 2023.

• There were 185,733 confirmed cases of unauthorised fraud reported in 2024, a 20 per cent decrease on the total reported in 2023.

Enablers

The vast majority of fraudulent activity starts outside the banking sector and the key to tackling and ultimately reducing losses and the impact on consumers is greater understanding on where and how fraud and scams originate.

UK Finance’s data shows that:

• 70 per cent of fraud cases are enabled by online sources. These cases tend to include lower-value scams such as purchase fraud and therefore account for 29 per cent of total losses.

• 16 per cent of fraud cases are enabled by telecommunications, these are usually higher value cases such as impersonation scams and so account for 36 per cent of losses.

Source: UK Finance

Scam types

UK Finance record data against eight scam types: malicious payee (purchase scam, investment scam, romance scam and advance fee scam) and malicious redirection (invoice and mandate scam, CEO fraud, impersonation: police/bank staff and impersonation: other).

Ranked in order by value the types are: