Bank of Italy reports EUR 3 per EUR 100,000 fraud rate in the first half of 2025 with higher e-money risk and improving instant SEPA transfers

The Bank of Italy published its semi-annual report on fraudulent payment transactions in Italy for the first half of 2025, covering retail use of bank transfers, payment cards, e-money and ATM withdrawals by payment service providers operating in Italy. The report finds that the overall fraud rate by value remained low at EUR 3 per EUR 100,000 transacted, while highlighting materially different risk profiles by instrument, channel, geography and the use of security measures. By instrument, fraud rates were stable year on year for payment cards at EUR 18 per EUR 100,000, ATM withdrawals at EUR 10 per EUR 100,000 and bank transfers at EUR 2 per EUR 100,000. E-money fraud increased, especially for prepaid cards, rising to EUR 31 per EUR 100,000 from EUR 27 per EUR 100,000 a year earlier. Fraud on instant SEPA credit transfers was higher than on standard SEPA credit transfers at EUR 43 per EUR 100,000, but fell significantly versus the previous half-year, which the report links in part to strengthened prevention measures and awareness initiatives following the Instant Payments Regulation requirement from 9 October 2025 for verification that the payee name and IBAN match. E-commerce continued to show higher risk than physical point of sale, with a narrowing gap for debit and credit cards but a widening gap for e-money. Cross-border transactions, particularly outside the European Economic Area, had a significantly higher incidence of fraud than domestic transactions, especially for payment cards and e-money. Strong Customer Authentication payments showed very low risk relative to non-Strong Customer Authentication payments, while payer manipulation remained the predominant fraud type for bank transfers and unauthorized transaction fraud dominated for payment cards and e-money.