Payment Card Fraud Rates in the United States Relative to Other Countries since Migrating to Chip Cards

Abstract

The United States has lagged somewhat behind other countries in implementing steps to mitigate payment card fraud, such as chip card technology and personal identification numbers. Small delays in implementing fraud mitigation strategies could translate to large fraud losses relative to other countries. Although comparing fraud rates across countries can be challenging, Fumiko Hayashi examines payment card fraud rates in the United States along with three countries with the best available data?Australia, France, and the United Kingdom?and finds that the United States has the highest overall fraud rate. Even after migrating to chip card technology, the United States has a significantly higher in-person fraud rate than all three countries but a lower remote fraud rate than Australia and France. Fewer safeguards and differences in prevalent types of transactions may help explain this.