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.
How to read this page
Annual loss figures cover calendar year 2024 (UK Finance Annual Fraud Report 2025) — the latest complete year; UK Finance publishes the next edition in mid-2026.
APP reimbursement figures now cover the full first year of the mandatory regime, October 2024 to September 2025 (PSR Reimbursement Dashboard).
Figures use UK Finance, PSR and Action Fraud data, last checked on 3 Jun 2026.
Data period: 2024 – 2026-04·Last reviewed: 3 Jun 2026·Quarterly updates·Sources: Action Fraud / NFIB · Office for National Statistics · Payment Systems Regulator · UK Finance
1.
Six figures that frame UK payment fraud in 2024–25
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.
Lead figuresThe two most-cited numbers: 2024 losses and the regime's first full year.
Total UK fraud losses
£1.17bn
▼ 0.5%vs 2023
Broadly flat year on year. APP cases fell 20% to 185,733, but criminals pivoted to high-volume remote-purchase fraud, pushing unauthorised cases up 14% to 3.13 million.
UK Finance Annual Fraud Report 20252024
APP reimbursement rate, Year 1
88%
▲ 23 ptsvs 65% pre-mandate
In the first full year of the mandatory regime (Oct 2024–Sep 2025), 88% of in-scope money lost was reimbursed — £173m across roughly 188,000 in-scope claims. 82% of claims closed within five business days.
PSR APP Reimbursement DashboardYear 1
Supporting figuresLoss totals by category, plus the amount prevented before reaching victims.
APP scam losses
£451m
▼ 2%vs 2023
Stable but stubborn — the attempt rate matters more than the outcome.
UK Finance · PSR2024
Unauthorised card fraud
£572m
▼ 5%vs 2023
Strong Customer Authentication continues to suppress losses.
UK Finance2024
Remote purchase card fraud
£400m
▲ 11%cases +22%
Three-quarters of all card fraud sits here. 75% of e-commerce CNP fraud occurred at merchants acquired outside the UK (£154.2m stolen abroad).
UK Finance2024
Fraud prevented
£1.45bn
▲ 2%vs 2023
Prevention systems now stop more fraud than is paid out. Counterfeit card fraud has been all but eradicated (£4m), and contactless fraud fell for the first time since 2020.
UK Finance2024
2.
Total losses held flat — but the attempt rate keeps climbing
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.
Unauthorised card fraud is 31% below its 2019 peak
Annual unauthorised card-fraud losses, calendar years 2019 to 2024. Strong Customer Authentication came fully into force in March 2022.
Source: UK Finance · 2019 to 2024Checked 3 Jun 2026
Headline volumes
Six-year trend behind each top-line figure.
Total lossesConsumer + SME
£1.17bn▼ 0.5%
Unauthorised cases≈8,580 every day
3.13m▲ 14%
Fraud preventedStopped before reaching victims
£1.45bn▲ 2%
Prevented vs paid outThird year above 1.0
1.24×▲
Source: UK Finance · 2024
What this means
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.
3.
The biggest fraud risk has moved off the card and onto the conversation
Card fraud is shrinking. APP scams happen over voice, chat and social — outside any bank's view of the payment.
Investment scams now top every card-fraud category outside remote purchase
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.
Source: UK Finance Annual Fraud Report 2025 · 2024 · nine categoriesChecked 3 Jun 2026
The deepfake escalation. Action Fraud recorded £879.8m lost to investment fraud across 2025 (+31%), driven by cryptocurrency and AI-generated celebrity endorsements. Cloned likenesses of Martin Lewis appeared in 44% of celebrity-impersonation cases, Elon Musk in 40% and Jeremy Clarkson in 8%. Global deepfake-enabled fraud losses passed $1.56bn (£1.23bn) in 2025, and deepfakes now account for 40% of all biometric fraud.
APP scams · authorised£416m total
Outside the payment rail
Investment scams£144m
+34% · 32% of all APP losses · deepfake celebrity endorsements
Impersonation (police or bank)£66m
Mostly phone-led
Purchase scams£87m
71% of cases · low value per case
Invoice and mandate£43m
Targets businesses
Romance scams£31m
Down on banking interventions
CEO fraud£12m
Mix of social and email
Unauthorised card fraud£572m total
Inside the payment rail
Remote purchase (card-not-present)£400m
75% of all card fraud · cases up 22% despite SCA
Lost, stolen & contactless£104m
Contactless fraud fell for the first time since 2020 (£41.1m)
Counterfeit & card ID theft£23m
Counterfeit all but eradicated by EMV (£4m); card ID theft £19.3m, −39%
What this means
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.
4.
Mandatory reimbursement is now the operating reality for APP fraud
The October 2024 regime, now through its first full year, decides who pays when a scam succeeds — not how many scams are attempted.
APP losses had already plateaued near £450m before the new rules took effect
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.
Source: UK Finance · PSR · 2020 to Q1 2026Checked 3 Jun 2026
Two things sit under the numbers
Reading APP fraud well means separating attempts from outcomes.
Losses peaked before the rules changedAPP losses stayed near £450m from 2022 to 2024 — the result of voluntary-scheme pressure, faster-payment friction, and bank-side controls. The new regime did not need to land for losses to flatten.
The new regime changes outcomes, not attemptsMandatory reimbursement shifts who absorbs the loss when a scam succeeds. It does not measure how many scam attempts are prevented — that work happens upstream of the payment.
Source: UK Finance · PSR · 2024
A note on the Q1 2026 figure. Q1 2026 is a single quarter, so it cannot be compared directly with the 2020 to 2024 annual columns. Multiplying by four would put 2026 at around £408m, but APP losses are seasonal and the new regime is still bedding in.
Per-claim cap
£85,000
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.
Excess
£100 standard
Waived for vulnerable customers. Designed to discourage low-value opportunistic claims.
Cost split
50/50 between firms
The sending and receiving firms share the cost equally — a deliberate incentive on receiving banks to police inbound flows.
Service level
Five business days to refund
Firms can pause for up to 35 days where further investigation is required (for example, evidence of victim gross negligence).
5.
Card-not-present still drives about 75% of card-fraud losses
Authentication exemptions, wallet flows and merchant-initiated transactions are where card fraud still lives.
Three quarters of all card-fraud losses are remote-purchase (CNP)
2024 composition of unauthorised card fraud. CNP holds a stable 75% share even as the totals fall.
Source: UK Finance · 2024 · £572m totalChecked 3 Jun 2026
Card-not-present — the main diagnosis
The residual loss surface is SCA exemptions, low-value flows, merchant-initiated transactions and wallet provisioning.
2024 valueUK Finance
£395m
5-year changevs 2019 peak of £555m
−29%
Share of card fraudStable across 2022 to 2024
75%
Source: UK Finance · 2024
Why CNP losses are sticky
SCA cut the worst of the losses. What's left is the friction-free edge of the payment surface.
1
SCA exemptions
Low-value, trusted-merchant and transaction-risk-analysis exemptions are deliberately frictionless — and where most successful fraud now lands.
2
Merchant-initiated transactions
Recurring billing and stored credentials bypass per-transaction authentication. Once a card is compromised, MITs are easy to abuse.
3
Wallet provisioning
Pushing a stolen card into a digital wallet sidesteps issuer-side device checks and converts a CNP loss into a CP-style one.
About this figure. UK Finance reports CNP losses from the issuer's perspective, gross of any chargeback recoveries. Net-of-recovery numbers are 18 to 22% lower depending on the issuer mix.
6.
Year 1 of mandatory reimbursement: 88% of in-scope losses returned
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.
Share of in-scope APP losses reimbursed
65% → 88%
From the voluntary CRM baseline to the PSR-mandated regime's first full year (Oct 2024–Sep 2025). £173m returned across ~188,000 in-scope claims; 82% closed within five business days, 98% within the 35-day maximum.
Claim resolution speed, Year 1
0%50%100%
A new operational benchmark: most victims are made whole within a working week.
Why two reimbursement figures circulate. The PSR Reimbursement Dashboard reports 88% of in-scope Faster Payments losses reimbursed (£173m) over October 2024 to September 2025. UK Finance's Annual Fraud Report 2025 reports 59% of all APP money returned (£267m) over calendar-year 2024. The two differ because they cover different windows and different scopes — the PSR figure counts only mandate-eligible claims; the UK Finance figure counts all APP fraud, including out-of-scope and pre-mandate cases.
What this means
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.
7.
Sources and methodology
Every figure on this page maps to a named primary source. Vendor surveys and single-bank press releases are excluded.
6 sources Source register▾
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
How we check the data▾
Primary regulator and industry sources
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.
No press-release figures
We exclude vendor surveys, single-bank releases and cyber-firm "annual cost of fraud" projections. They use inconsistent definitions and rarely back-revise.
Like-for-like comparisons
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.
Reimbursement reported separately
The voluntary CRM code and the new mandatory regime are reported separately, so trends before and after October 2024 stay legible.
Data integrity
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. The revision log has 14 entries to date; cross-source reconciliation is checked on every full review. Last full review: 3 Jun 2026.
UK payment fraud FAQ
Common questions about APP scams, card fraud and reimbursement
How much money is lost to payment fraud in the UK?
Total UK payment fraud losses were £1.17 billion in 2024, down 4.3% from 2023. APP fraud and card fraud together account for over 87% of that total.
What is APP fraud?
Authorised Push Payment fraud is when someone is tricked into sending money to a fraudster's account. UK losses totalled £451 million in 2024. Investment scams (£144m) and impersonation fraud (£102m) drove most of those losses.
How much APP fraud is reimbursed?
88% of in-scope APP claims were reimbursed in the year to September 2025, under the PSR mandatory reimbursement regime that came into force in October 2024. The regime covers Faster Payments and CHAPS transactions up to £85,000.
What is remote purchase fraud?
Card-not-present (CNP) fraud, where a stolen card number is used for online or phone purchases without the physical card. UK CNP fraud cost £399.6 million in 2024 — the largest sub-category of card fraud. See the card processing page for how SCA affects merchant liability.
Which sources are used for UK payment fraud statistics?
UK Finance Annual Fraud Report (primary loss figures), PSR APP Reimbursement Dashboard (mandatory reimbursement data), and Action Fraud annual reports (regional reporting rates). See the sources section for full details.