The Australian Payments Clearing Association (APCA) has released statistics for cheque and payment card fraud in Australia for all financial institutions the 12 months to the end of June 2011.

Whilst cheque fraud dropped, scheme credit, debit and charge card fraud (signature-permitted debit, credit and charge cards and card-not-present (CNP) transactions) increased from 58.9 cents to 74.3 cents in every $1,000 transacted. The incidence of fraud on these cards increased from 34.6 to 41.9 in every 100,000 transactions.

CNP fraud is increasing. CNP is where the consumer is not face-to-face with the retailer – shopping online, by mail or by phone.

The figures show that CNP now accounts for 71% of fraud value on Australian-issued scheme credit, debit and charge cards, of which more than half occurs overseas.