Credit card companies are no strangers to scams.
A recent study showed that fraudsters are using credit card companies’ software to collect money from people who are not authorized to pay.
But a new study by researchers at the University of Oxford shows how these types of scams are often used by people who don’t have a credit card or don’t want to pay with a credit union.
The researchers examined a sample of 3,000 online banking transactions in the UK and Ireland between June 2011 and April 2013.
They used data from the Bank of England’s Credit Fraud and Counterfeit Monitoring Service to track all the transactions in a month, as well as the total number of fraudulent credit card transactions.
“The most common method of credit card fraud is to take advantage of a customer’s ignorance of the transaction terms, which leads to the use of an invalid credit card,” the researchers wrote in the paper.
“The vast majority of frauds occur when people use fraudulent credit cards to commit a financial crime that would otherwise be difficult to detect.”
This is an excerpt from the article: The most common type of credit fraud is the fraudulent purchase of a credit-card-like card by a person without the intended intention to pay it.
Credit card fraud in the United Kingdom was estimated to have increased by 1,500 per cent from 2007 to 2013, and by 3,500 percent from 2008 to 2013.
The fraud rate increased from 0.8 per cent in 2011 to 0.9 per cent by 2012, but then began to decrease, the study found.
The report says this decline was largely due to the introduction of new fraud detection and monitoring technologies, which helped the number of credit-cards stolen rise from 2.5 million in 2007 to over 7 million in 2013.
In other words, there was a spike in credit card scams in 2010, but the overall number of fraud incidents dropped by a staggering 25 per cent between 2012 and 2013.
The Oxford researchers found that many credit card users who did not have a card would still be able to fraudulently use their credit card to purchase goods and services from the credit union and pay the bill.
“Some credit card customers who do not have any credit cards at all are more likely to be targeted by fraudsters,” said study co-author Matthew Walker, a lecturer in finance at Oxford University.
“They’re not paying their bills and are not even aware that they have been charged.”
The researchers believe that many of these people were unaware of the fraudulence risk.
The researchers say it’s often difficult for victims to identify fraudsters who are using fraudulent credit- cards.
“People who are unfamiliar with credit card payment systems may assume that fraud is unlikely,” the report says.
“However, fraudsters often use credit card applications to commit financial crimes that could otherwise be detected.”
If you or someone you know is being contacted by a fraudster or is considering using credit cards, it’s important to tell the credit-counselor, the report adds.
“If you can identify the identity of the credit card holder, contact your bank or credit card issuer immediately and request that the card be cancelled.”
Read more about fraud, credit cards and credit-unions
