Banks and Dutch Payments Association: PwC figures incorrect

6 June 2013

Losses caused by debit card skimming amounted to €29 million in 2012, not the much higher figure suggested by a PricewaterhouseCoopers sample commissioned by the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations. PwC’s calculation is incorrect.

On 3 April 2013, the Dutch Banking Association published its annual payment fraud figures. Criminals committed fraud with 51,172 skimmed cards in 2012, causing total losses of €28.96 million, 26% less than in 2011. The average loss per card was around €570. Fortunately, this downward trend is continuing in 2013 because all major banks have introduced geoblocking, all cards now have a chip and preventive measures have been installed on payment terminals. The Dutch Banking Association will publish the figures for the first half of 2013 shortly.

PwC believes that extrapolated data indicate that 333,000 cards were used for fraud and that losses amounted to €118 million. This is incorrect. PwC itself expresses doubts about its calculation and cannot explain the large difference from the Dutch Banking Association’s figures. The Dutch Banking Association and the Dutch Payments Association suspect that PwC made a conceptual error. Banks preventively block large numbers of debit cards when skimming has occurred or is suspected, thereby preventing misuse as much as possible. Not every blocked card has been skimmed or results in actual losses, so PwC’s figure is far too high. The figures published by the Dutch Banking Association for several years represent the actual losses suffered by banks through misuse of skimmed cards.

The Dutch Banking Association and the Dutch Payments Association regret that the researchers did not contact them, resulting in a completely inaccurate picture of the losses.

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