The Rise of Card Payments

Are cash payments truly falling?

With the use of contactless and card payments rising, they now account for over three quarters of the value of the UK’s retail purchases. The latest British Retail Consortium’s (BRC) payments survey for 2017 states that cards were used for £277.1 billion worth of payments, equaling 76% of all retail sales.

Due to this, cash payments are therefore on the fall, making up just 22% of sales for 2017.

There were 18.3 billion total card transactions made throughout 2017, with fraud losses on UK-issued cards equaling £556 million alone.

But how does this affect the retailers?

Retailers’ fees for processing card payments is now reaching an extraordinary £1 billion each year. Aspects such as credit card fraud, could end up costing retailers even more money; these card processing payments don’t factor in fraudulent transactions.

For the consumer, the convenience of card and contactless payments is increasing greatly; but with convenience comes risk.

In the UK alone, debit and credit card fraud has almost doubled from 2012 to 2017, rising from 997,507 cases of fraud to 1,874,002. 2016 saw 80% of payment fraud made up of solely credit and debit card fraud. With Acuant’s fraud prevention and identity verification solutions, we can help businesses to reduce that figure significantly.

How can you prevent fraud?

Through our flagship solution, PROFILE, cross-checked with our document authentication capabilities, Acuant can help businesses to analyse digital data in real-time, verifying identity quickly and efficiently, in a frictionless user journey, compared to traditional verification methods.