The findings come as part of the 2023 State of the Cybercrime Underground report by Cybersixgill. The report found that the number of compromised cards grew by 10% between 2021 and 2022 in the UK, compared to a 78% drop in cards available to fraudsters globally during the same period. 

In 2019 there were 140 million compromised cards up for sale on the dark web. In this most recent report, there were nine million in the last year, a 94% drop in four years. The sharp decline can be attributed to four main reasons according to the report: 

• Improved authentication and fraud prevention, using biometric authentication, fingerprints, face recognition, PINs, EMV chips, and multi-factor authentication to make it harder to compromise a card successfully.
• Real-time fraud detection, using machine learning algorithms to analyse user behaviour, patterns, and geolocation to detect suspicious activity. 
• Improved security on e-commerce sites, making it harder for criminals to steal information from customers, using measures such as two-factor authentication, address verification, and real-time transaction monitoring. 
• Law enforcement crackdowns, as part of worldwide coordinated efforts, some of the largest underground carding markets and cyber criminals have been brought to justice. 

Despite these efforts, the UK remains to have remarkably high rates of credit card fraud. Per capita, the UK has the highest rates of compromised cards in the world at one card per every 68 residents. Compared to one in every 88 in the US. At the same time, the UK’s share of cards on dark markets increased from 5% to 13% during the same period the US stopped from 58% to 49%. 

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Some pundits believe the war in Ukraine is a major cause for the decline in credit card theft. Recorded Future’s Annual Payment Fraud Report in 2022 found that there was a 24% year on year decrease in the number of card not present records on the dark web and a 62% decrease in card present records. 

The report points to the Russian crackdown on cybercrime groups which the report claims they did to signal intent to cooperate with the West on the grounds of cybercrime should the West Acquiesce to Russian demands regarding Ukraine. The report also pointed to the mobilisation and energy instability in the Donbas region of Ukraine to have had an effect on the suspected cyber-criminal server infrastructure present there.