How Much Credit Card Fraud Was There In 2018?

Credit card fraud was rampant in 2018. How rampant? $24.26 billion rampant. That’s a lot of money.

How Much is $24 Billion?

The nation of Senegal has a GDP of 24.2 billion dollars and is ranked at #108 in the world. That means the amount of credit card fraud totaled more than the nominal GDP of 85 nations around the globe.

Before its IPO Lyft was valued at $24 billion.

Between 2007 and 2012 Bill Gates gave away $28 billion of his personal fortune and is credited with helping to save 6 million lives by bringing vaccines and better healthcare to impoverished children around the world. That’s only 4 billion dollars more than the amount of money stolen.

A personal fortune of $28 billion would not get you into the top 25 of the world’s richest people but it would get you close. According to Forbes it would put you at #32, just after Brazilian banker and 50% owner of Chiquita Brands Joseph Safra and just ahead of Russian petrochemical magnate Leonid Mikhelson. 

The U.S. is #1 in fraud

Credit card fraud is not going away and it is only getting worse. Much of that is because more people now rely on their cards rather than using cash to make payments and more merchants are accepting other forms of payment besides cash. In some cases merchants are no longer accepting cash at all. 

Here in the US we account for a whopping 38.6% of all fraud. That comes out to about $9.3 billion or about $28 for every man, woman and child living in the US. Now granted that is chump change when compared to our national debt but that is a lot of money. 

Why Is The U.S. #1?

We are #1 for many reasons. First is that we are the wealthiest country in the world and fraudsters go where the wealth is. It’s the same reason most cyber criminals target Windows machines rather than Mac. Second is that we lag behind the rest of the world when it comes to credit card security and technology. There are many reasons why that is but we are slower to adapt new technology and new measures and this is the result.

You have undoubtedly seen the number of data breaches that have happened. We’ve had several more high profile ones in recent weeks. Do you know what they all share in common? When the data breach occurred they were outside of PCI compliance. PCI compliance is no joke. You need to take it seriously and maintain it all year round, not just when it comes time for your evaluation. 

This is one category that we do not want to lead the world in so do your part and maintain PCI compliance!