Why the check is really not a safe method of payment

The digital transformation is everywhere in progress, but not in payment fraud, where crooks still work in the old-fashioned way. According to the last report of the Observatory of Payment Security the payment card remains at the forefront of frauds by means of payment, but if checks become more and more rare, they are in second place. But above all, they account for 40% of the total amount of fraud by being only in 4th place of the means of payment.

The use of this means of payment continues to decline in number of operations (-10 %) and up (-7%). But fraud is progressing with the use of lost or stolen checks or falsification. The average amount of each fraud reaches 8100 euros. In 2017, it increased by 9% to reach 296 million euros against 272 million in 2016.

To relativize, this represents a rate of 0.0286%, or one euro for 3500 euros. In France, the use of the check remains a European peculiarity. Despite its decline, it still accounts for 11.3% of volume payments. Just after Malta (21.6%) and ahead of Cyprus (8.1%), according to the ECB (European Central Bank).

Dematerialized payments scare away fraudsters

The bank card remains far ahead even though, as the report indicates, the "global card fraud issued in France is decreasing in 2017 for the second year in a row". The fraud rate on card transactions represents 0.054%, or about one euro of fraud for 1850 euros of transactions.

For the Banque de France, these increases are based on the systems put in place to protect dematerialized means of payment. Fraudsters prefer to attack those who remain the most vulnerable and in this area, the check is in the lead. Fraud transfers have indeed decreased by 17% to 0.0003%, the equivalent of one euro of fraud for 300,000 euros of payment. As for the levies, the drop between 2016 and 2017 is estimated at -78%.

Overall, fraud fell by -6.8% to € 744 million, or € 54 million less than in 2016. "Never before have we seen such a sharp decline," says François Villeroy de Galhau, governor of the Banque de France, while keeping an eye on cryptocurrencies in general and bitcoin in particular. For him, "those who invest in this crypto-badet do so at their own risk."