Online banking: Fraud losses in the United Kingdom (UK) 2010-2020

Online banking fraud is the fraudulent act of accessing and/or transferring funds from a person's online banking account for the purpose of financial gain. The annual value of online banking fraud losses fluctuated overall during the period under observation, reaching a value of approximately 159.7 million British pounds in 2020. The second largest value of online banking fraud losses in the UK was found in 2015, when a total annual value of 133.5 million British pounds was recorded.

Financial fraud

Online banking fraud is categorized under the larger group of remote banking fraud, which accounted for more than 150 billion GBP in losses during 2019. Remote banking fraud was the third largest type of financial fraud seen in 2020. Other types of financial fraud include payment cards, authorized push payments and cheque fraud.

Payment card fraud

In 2019, criminals in the United Kingdom (UK) managed to steal approximately 1.28 billion British pounds (GBP). Almost half of all financial fraud in the UK was completed via payment card fraud. Payment card fraud includes credit, debit, charge and ATM only cards. In 2020, almost a quarter of all payment card fraud on UK cards was from abroad. The majority of payment card losses were through remote purchase (card not present) transactions.