14 DAY TRIAL // According to the latest annual report from the European ATM Security Team (EAST), ATM fraud losses amounted to €268 million in 2010, which represents a 14% reduction over the previous year.
The €44 million drop comes after an ever bigger fall of 36% in fraud losses registered during 2009 and is also coupled with a decrease in the number of incidents.
There were a total of 12.383 ATM fraud attacks in 2010 across the 22 European countries monitored by EAST, 7% less than in 2009.
ATM fraud losses peaked in December 2007 at €315 million and have been declining ever since due to adoption of the EMV Chip and PIN technology which prevents card skimming attacks.
In fact, 82% of ATM fraud losses suffered by European banks occur outside of Europe in countries that have not implemented EMV. This is because Chip and PIN cards are backwards-compatible with non-EMV ATMs.
"The risk of counterfeit EMV cards being used to withdraw cash fraudulently from ATMs in parts of the world that are not EMV compliant remains high and is leading some European card issuers to implement additional security measures," EAST says.
The number of physical attacks against ATM machines has also decreased by 16% compared to 2009 and counted 2,062 incidents. The only type of attacks that did increase were the explosive ones whose numbers reached 278 last year.
Dating back to 2004 EAST is a not-for-profit organization whose purpose is to gather, analyze and share information about ATM crimes with the European ATM industry.
Its latest report echos the findings of the UK Cards Association which reported that card fraud decreased by 17% in UK last year. The association also named the increasing EMV adoption as one of the reasons for the decline.