European Payments Council publishes the 2021 Payment Threats and Fraud Trends Report

The European Payments Council (EPC) is committed to contribute to safe, reliable, efficient, convenient, economically balanced and sustainable payments, which meet the needs of payment service users and support the goals of competitiveness and innovation in an integrated European economy.

For this reason, the EPC publishes the yearly “Payment Threat and Fraud Trends Report” to contribute to creating awareness on payment threats and fraud trends, and to help payment stakeholders decide on possible actions to prevent fraud.

The “2021 Payment Threats and Fraud Trends Report” provides an overview of the most important threats and other “fraud enablers” in the payments landscape, including: social engineering, malware, advanced persistent threats (APTs), denial of service, botnets, monetisation channels.

For each threat, an analysis is made of the impact and context and suggested controls and mitigations are described. An overview matrix listing the threats with the main controls and mitigation measures is provided in Annex I.

The description of the threats is followed by a section that elaborates on how the identified threats impact payment-relevant processes: On-boarding/ Provisioning, Invoicing/ Request-to-Pay, Initiation/ Authentication, and Execution.

The types of fraud related to specific payment instruments (cards, Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) schemes –  SEPA Credit Transfer, SEPA Direct Debit, SEPA Instant Credit Transfer – and mobile wallets) and supporting schemes such as SEPA Request-to-Pay, are described in the following section while conclusions are presented in the final section.

The report attempts to create awareness amongst stakeholders involved in payments to allow them to decide on possible mitigating measures to prevent fraud.