UK Finance has released its latest annual fraud report, detailing the amount its members reported as stolen through payment fraud in 2024.

There were 3.13 million confirmed cases of unauthorised fraud reported in 2024 (up 14% compared to 2023) and losses totalled £722 million in 2024 (up 2%), according to the report.

One of the main reasons for the rise was an increase in remote purchase fraud, which had been falling in recent years. In this type of fraud criminals use stolen card details to buy something on the internet, over the phone or through mail order. Overall, remote purchase fraud case numbers increased by 22% to nearly 2.6 million, and losses increased 11% to just under £400 million.

By using similar tactics to APP fraud, we have seen criminals use social engineering techniques to try and get people to divulge one-time passcodes (OTPs). Once in possession of an OTP a criminal is often able to authenticate fraudulent transactions or to register compromised card details for digital wallets.

Card ID theft saw cases and losses fall back after a spike in 2023.  Losses fell 26% to £58.7 million, with case volumes falling 23% to just over 109,000.

Contactless fraud losses decreased by 1% – the first time a reduction has been reported for this category since 2020. Remote banking losses also fell by seven per cent, with cases dropping by 17%.

£1.45 billion of unauthorised fraud was prevented by industry, an increase of 16 per cent compared to 2023 and equivalent to 67p in every £1 of attempted fraud.

Authorised Push Payment fraud losses

According to the report, authorised push payment (APP) fraud losses dropped in 2024, falling two per cent to £450.7 million. The total comprised £365.7 million of personal losses and £84.9 million on non-personal losses.

The number of APP fraud cases fell by 20 per cent to under 186,000. This is the lowest figure since 2020 and was driven by a range of factors, including investing in technology that can help identify and flag potentially fraudulent activity, to educating and raising awareness among consumers.

The biggest amount of APP losses came from investment fraud, which occurs when a criminal convinces their victim to move their money to a fictitious fund or to pay for a fake investment. £144.4 million was stolen through this type of fraud in 2024, an increase of 34% from 2023, despite a 24% reduction in cases.

Purchase scams, when a victim pays in advance for goods or services that are never received, continues to be the most common type of APP fraud. Losses to purchase scams increased by one per cent to £87.1 million, though case numbers fell 16%.

The number of fraud cases where criminals impersonate a bank or the police and convince someone to transfer money to a “safe account” fell again in 2024, with losses and case numbers dropping 16% and 32% respectively.

There was a notable increase in international payments that were made as part of APP fraud, with criminals likely trying to get people to send money outside of the UK. International payments accounted for 11% of APP losses in 2024, up from 6% in 2023.

Reimbursement

Victims of unauthorised fraud cases are legally protected against losses and UK Finance research indicates that customers are fully refunded in more than 98% of unauthorised fraud cases.

In respect of APP fraud, in October 2024 the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) introduced new reimbursement rules. This means there were different reimbursement APP regimes in place throughout 2024. In total, £267.1 million of APP fraud was reimbursed to victims by banks, around 59% of all money stolen from APP fraud.

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On 15 May 2025 the PSR issued an update on reimbursement under its new rules and reported that in the first three months of the rules being in force, 86% of money stolen through in-scope APP fraud was returned to victims.

UK Finance’s data covers a wider range of payments and account types than those covered by the new rules from the PSR which means they are not directly comparable.

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