Card fraud against the travel industry increased by £800,000 from £23.3 million in 2005 to £24.1 million last year.
Banking trade body APACS spokeswoman Sandra Quinn said it was impossible to establish the reason for the increase. However, she suspected an increase in card-not-present fraud – through call centres and over the Internet – was responsible for the increase.
Across all industries card fraud reduced by £11.4 million to £428 million in 2006, with high street card fraud slashed by 47% to £72.1 million, mainly due to Chip and PIN.
However, card-not-present fraud increased by 16% in 2006 to £212.6 million, almost half of the overall card fraud total.
“Travel is obvious sector for fraudsters to target as purchases are of a high value,” Quinn said. “I suspect the increase is due to more people booking holidays over the Internet as face-to-face fraud has become much harder with the introduction of Chip and PIN.”
Quinn added travel was not alone in seeing an increase in fraudulent card transactions and cited the entertainment industry as another sector which experienced an increase in 2006.
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