Fraud through manipulation of online payments on the rise, warns the Banque de France

Be careful during this end-of-year shopping period. The fraud rate on card payments reached its lowest level in 2022 at 0.99%, but manipulation fraud techniques are developing, with an annual increase of 27%, the Bank of France warned on Thursday. “This is an important point of vigilance,” explains Alexandre Stervinou, director of studies and payment monitoring at the Banque de France, on the subject of this new type of fraud, the total amount of which is estimated at 340 million euros. euros in 2022.

Most often, the manipulation results in identity theft: “the fraudster pretends to be the bank advisor of the targeted person and asks them to provide their banking credentials,” explains Julien Lasalle, deputy to Alexandre Stervinou. The security provided by sophisticated IT mechanisms such as double authentication is thus circumvented. “This is one of our main difficulties today,” he insists.

The manipulation thus makes it possible to obtain personal data, or even the banking information necessary for a transaction without the knowledge of the victims, who belong to “all socio-professional categories”, assures Julien Lasalle. To combat this phenomenon, telephone operators could be an important lever, by making it possible to authenticate the origin of a malicious call and possibly block it.

The Naegelen law, passed in 2020, is also supposed to regulate telephone canvassing and reduce “the space of possibilities” for fraudsters, in the words of Alexandre Stervinou. But the Bank of France deplores in its report published Thursday “delays” in its application, “due to high technical complexity”.

The institution speaks of an “urgency” to put in place “a mechanism to protect sensitive numbers in the payments sector in an approach involving banks and operators”. In the meantime, the Banque de France highlights the “cautious attitude” to adopt to protect itself from fraudsters. “No one has to ask you for your account number on the phone,” insisted Alexandre Stervinou. Overall, the Banque de France counted 7.2 million fraudulent transactions in 2022, for an amount reaching 1.2 billion euros, all types of fraud combined.