Bank of Italy updates payment fraud report, overall fraud rate stays at 0.003 per cent as instant credit transfer and e-money fraud declines

The Bank of Italy has published an updated report on fraudulent payment transactions in Italy covering the second half of 2025. It found that fraud remained low overall at 0.003 per cent of transaction value, or EUR 3 per EUR 100,000 transacted. By instrument, fraud rates were broadly unchanged for payment cards at 0.017 per cent, ATM withdrawals at 0.01 per cent and ordinary credit transfers at 0.002 per cent, while e-money and instant credit transfers recorded declines. The sharpest improvement was in instant credit transfers, where the fraud rate fell to EUR 28 per EUR 100,000 transacted from EUR 45 in the previous half-year. The report links that decline, among other factors, to stronger prevention measures and customer awareness efforts by payment service providers after the Instant Payments Regulation required verification of payee services for SEPA credit transfers from 9 October 2025. E-commerce transactions continued to show higher fraud rates than payments at physical point-of-sale terminals, although the gap narrowed for both cards and e-money. Cross-border transactions, especially those outside the European Economic Area, remained significantly riskier than domestic payments, while transactions using Strong Customer Authentication showed much lower fraud rates than non-SCA payments, particularly in cross-border activity. The report also highlights that payer manipulation remains the dominant fraud type for credit transfers, whereas cards and e-money are more affected by unauthorized transactions such as stolen payment credentials or theft of the instrument itself. In the underlying report data, customers bore 92 per cent of fraud losses on credit transfers and 68 per cent on ATM withdrawals, compared with 40 per cent for cards and e-money.