The pandemic has accelerated the digitization of payments by mobile devices that started to play a major role. The perpetrators of extortion and fraud in the financial market are also focusing on their use.
According to the report by Crowe and the University of Portsmouth, global value of fraud losses in all areas of the global economy exceeds $ 5 trillion. It is over 6% of global GDP and, for comparison, twice the national income of Great Britain.
The scale of fraudsters’ activity is really large, because every tenth bank account opening and every eighth account password change were caused by their activities. The main tool for hacking accounts and payments are bots – the number of their attacks has increased by 77% over the year.
E-commerce remains a special area of fraud and its importance increased significantly during the pandemic. According to the Cybersource study, platforms and online stores in 2021 lost an average of 3.1% of value of revenues because of frauds and it is expected that in 2022 these losses may increase to 3.6% of sales value.
In the USA, the threat of using a synthetic identity has been growing for several years. Losses on this account in 2020 amounted to approximately USD 20 billion, compared to USD 6 billion four years earlier. This method consists in creating a new customer identity, when the authentic data of several people, stolen from various institutions, is combined with completely fictitious data.
The victims of criminals’ activities are not only financial institutions, but also online stores, hospitals, government agencies, as well as bookmakers bets. The average value of funds fraudulent with the use of artificial identity is from 81 thousand up to 97 thousand dollars, says the FiVerity analysis.
Financial crimes based on more and more advanced technologies can be expected to increase in the coming years. The analytical company Experian estimates that by 2025, this loss worldwide will exceed $ 200 billion.
In order to reduce such threats, the actions of individual entities on the financial market are not enough effective; international cooperation is needed.
European Union is aiming to implement a strong and secure digital identity that can be used in public and private offline and online services throughout the community. Human beings will, however, remain the weakest link in the area of cybersecurity.
Mirosław Ciesielski, an academic lecturer, describing financial markets, changes in the fintechs and startups market