International Payment Card Fraud Meeting In Singapore

On 11 – 12 November, 18 experts from EU Member States (Bulgaria, France, Germany and Romania) and Asian partners including Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam as well as ASEANAPOL gathered all together in the INTERPOL Global Complex for Innovation in Singapore for a two-day meeting to discuss payment card fraud overseas and money withdrawals in the extended South East Asia region.

This meeting was co-hosted by Europol and INTERPOL in cooperation with the newly appointed Europol Liaison Officer to IGCI, the assistance of the EU Delegation in Singapore and the financial support of the Romanian authorities. As part of cybercrime, payment card fraud is one of the nine EU priorities within the EU policy cycle (2014/2017) for organised crime and serious international crime as endorsed by the EU Council.

The aim of this event was to increase awareness among experts about card skimming and overseas money withdrawals modi operandi and good practices, and identify new logical attacks and ATM and point-of-sales terminals malware. The final objective is to tackle organised crime groups with a view to maintaining a high level of security in Europe as well as all over the world.

In that regard, the multi-stakeholder approach is key as illustrated by the commitment taken by all partners including INTERPOL, ASEANAPOL and the Private Sector represented by the European ATM Security Team (EAST) which provided the law enforcement community with a comprehensive overview of the situation as perceived by Industry.

Although ATM-related fraud incidents within the EU decreased by 26% in 2014, overall losses were up 13%. This is mainly due to the cashing out of compromised cards in jurisdictions outside of the EU where EMV (chip and pin) protection has not yet been fully implemented, mainly the Americas and Southeast Asia – Indonesia and the Philippines in particular. Some organised crime groups set up permanent bases in these locations to facilitate their activities.