Where's the money in card payments? Despite all we hear about e-commerce and other kinds of remote payments, in-person payments remain strong. The total dollar value of in-person card payments exceeded the total dollar value of remote payments in both 2015 and 2016. In-person payments were 56 percent of all card payments by value in 2016, and 58 percent in 2015. By number, the race is not even close: 78 percent of card payments were in person in 2016.
Looking at change from 2015 to 2016, however, another story could be emerging. When we consider the growth in the value of card payments, remote payments grew by 11 percent from 2015 to 2016, compared to about 3 percent growth by value for in-person card payments. By number, in-person card payments increased 5 percent and remote by 17 percent.
It wasn't only remote payments that grew from 2015 to 2016—so did remote fraud. In fact, it grew faster than remote payments did overall. Remote fraud by value grew more than three times faster than the value of remote payments—35 percent compared to 11 percent. By number, remote fraud grew about twice as fast—32 percent compared to 17 percent.
In contrast to the mix of remote and in-person card payments overall, where in-person payments still are the majority, fraudulent remote card payments were more than half of all fraudulent card payments by both value and number in 2016.
These data suggest that remote card payments fraud is likely to be of increasing concern for the U.S. payments system going forward. Additional data are included in the report at www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/fr-payments-study.htm.
To learn more about payments fraud, you can sign up for the Talk About Payments webinar on November 1 at 11 a.m. (ET). This webinar is open to the public but you must register in advance to participate.
By Claire Greene, a payments risk expert in the Retail Payments Risk Forum at the Atlanta Fed