According to the South African Banking Risk Information Centre (Sabric). Losses due to credit card fraud increased drastically from R366 million in 2013 to a staggering R453.9 million in 2014. According to Sabric CEO Kalyani Pillay, the biggest contribution to the increase was false applications fraud.
Out of all the fraud perpetrated on cards acquired through false application, 88% of the transactions occurred in SA. Sabric noticed that criminals misuse the online application channels provided by banks by using false details to open multiple credit card accounts. Consequently they then obtain legitimate cards and PINs.
In recent years counterfeit credit card fraud losses in South Africa decreased by 12 % while, “card not present” fraud committed in South Africa increased by 21 %. Losses associated with debit card fraud has increased by 5%. The majority of the debit card losses are related to counterfeit card fraud and most of the transactions occurred within South Africa. When debit cards are used outside of the borders of South Africa a high percentage of the cards are used in neighboring countries such as Lesotho, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Botswana.
Gauteng, the Western Cape, and KwaZulu-Natal were responsible for 88 percent of all credit card fraud losses.
Skimming devices have also been recovered all over the country, make sure you take note of what they look like to prevent yourself from getting scammed. Card skimming involved the illegal copying of encoded information from the magnetic strip of a legitimate card by means of a card reader, and this could occur either at ATMs or points of sales.
