UK fraud losses held at £1.17 billion in 2024. In the first full year of the mandatory APP reimbursement regime (October 2024 to September 2025), 88% of in-scope losses were reimbursed, but criminals have pivoted to deepfake-enabled investment scams and high-volume remote-purchase fraud.
Two lead figures show the scale of losses and the impact of the now year-old APP reimbursement regime. Four supporting figures break down where losses sit.
The value of fraud barely moved in 2024. The number of attempts did not stop rising: unauthorised fraud cases jumped 14% to 3.13 million as criminals shifted to high-volume, lower-value remote-purchase fraud.
Annual unauthorised card-fraud losses, calendar years 2019 to 2024. Strong Customer Authentication came fully into force in March 2022.
| Category | Card fraud losses |
|---|---|
| 2019 | 620.00 |
| 2020 | 574.00 |
| 2021 | 524.00 |
| 2022 | 556.00 |
| 2023 | 663.00 |
| 2024 | 673.00 |
Six-year trend behind each top-line figure.
The value of fraud is falling, but the number of attempts is not. The UK is reducing losses faster than it is reducing exposure. Defenders are catching more, but attackers are still trying just as often.
Card fraud is shrinking. APP scams happen over voice, chat and social, outside any bank's view of the payment.
UK fraud losses by category in 2024. APP scam categories (top row) happen outside the payment rail. Unauthorised card-fraud categories (bottom row) happen inside it.
Card defences work because the bank can see the transaction. APP scams move the fight upstream: the decision to send the money is made in a chat or phone call, before the bank ever sees a payment instruction.
The October 2024 regime, now through its first full year, decides who pays when a scam succeeds, not how many scams are attempted.
Annual APP scam losses from 2020 to 2024 (£450.7m in 2024, −2%), plus a Q1 2026 quarter shown dashed because it covers a single quarter, not a full year.
| Category | APP fraud gross losses |
|---|---|
| 2019 | 456.00 |
| 2020 | 479.00 |
| 2021 | 583.00 |
| 2022 | 485.00 |
| 2023 | 460.00 |
| 2024 | 451.00 |
Reading APP fraud well means separating attempts from outcomes.
Reduced from the £415,000 figure in the original consultation. Above the cap, victims can still claim through firms that have signed up to the voluntary scheme.
Waived for vulnerable customers. Designed to discourage low-value opportunistic claims.
The sending and receiving firms share the cost equally, a deliberate incentive on receiving banks to police inbound flows.
Firms can pause for up to 35 days where further investigation is required (for example, evidence of victim gross negligence).
Authentication exemptions, wallet flows and merchant-initiated transactions are where card fraud still lives.
2024 composition of unauthorised card fraud. CNP holds a stable 75% share even as the totals fall.
| Category | Card-not-present fraud |
|---|---|
| 2019 | 470.00 |
| 2020 | 376.00 |
| 2021 | 396.00 |
| 2022 | 395.00 |
| 2023 | 416.00 |
| 2024 | 432.00 |
The residual loss surface is SCA exemptions, low-value flows, merchant-initiated transactions and wallet provisioning.
SCA cut the worst of the losses. What's left is the friction-free edge of the payment surface.
The first full year of the regime (October 2024 to September 2025) reimbursed £173m to victims, a step change from the 65% pre-mandate baseline.
Voluntary code, inconsistent coverage, firm participation varied.
Mandatory framework, broader coverage, formal operational timelines.
The mandatory regime has materially improved outcomes for victims who claim successfully, and made the UK an outlier in how fast money is returned. It does not, on its own, reduce how often scams are attempted; that still happens off the payment rail, in chat, voice, and online listings, increasingly with AI-generated content.
Focused datasets in this series, each tracing its figures to named primary sources.
Every figure on this page maps to a named primary source. Vendor surveys and single-bank press releases are excluded.
| Source | Publisher | Period covered | Type | Last checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Annual Fraud Report 2025 | UK Finance | 2024 calendar year | Industry body | 3 Jun 2026 |
| APP Reimbursement Dashboard | Payment Systems Regulator | Year 1: Oct 2024 – Sep 2025 | Regulator | 3 Jun 2026 |
| Investment & deepfake fraud data | Action Fraud / NFIB | 2025 | Primary | 3 Jun 2026 |
| Global Payments & Fraud Report 2026 | Merchant Risk Council (MRC) | 2025–26 (industry corroboration) | Industry survey | 3 Jun 2026 |
| Crime Survey for England & Wales | Office for National Statistics | Year ending March 2025 | Primary | 3 Jun 2026 |
| Reimbursement scheme operational data | Pay.UK | October 2024 to March 2026 | Industry body | 3 Jun 2026 |
UK Finance and the PSR provide the authoritative loss and reimbursement totals. We cross-check both before publishing, and prefer the regulator figure where the two differ.
We exclude vendor surveys, single-bank releases and cyber-firm "annual cost of fraud" projections. They use inconsistent definitions and rarely back-revise.
Where definitions changed mid-period (for example, the APP categories in 2023) we restate prior years using the new definition so the trend reads cleanly.
The voluntary CRM code and the new mandatory regime are reported separately, so trends before and after October 2024 stay legible.
Every figure on this page is mapped to a named primary source: UK Finance, the PSR, Pay.UK, the ONS or the City of London Police. Cross-source reconciliation is checked on every full review, and every value change is recorded in the hub-wide revision log (20 entries to date). Last full review: 3 Jun 2026.