Fraud on contactless cards and mobile devices has ballooned in the last two years as more Britons choose to use it for payments, figures show. Around £7million was taken fraudulently from the cards in 2016, according to latest figures from Financial Fraud UK. This compares to £2.8million in 2015 and just £153,000 in 2014 – an increase of 4,475 per cent. The increase has come as the card technology becomes more widespread, with transactions totalling more than £3.3billion every month The cards carry a maximum spend of £30 per transactions in UK shops, suggesting hundreds of thousands of illegal payments went through last year. There are now more than 100million contactless bank cards in issue, with many banks not offering debit cards without the technology that allows shoppers to tap-and-go. Critics argue that unlike chip-and-pin, criminals can steal the card and essentially go on a spending spree without needing to know a Pin or any other details. The average transaction is £9.06 according to figures, while one in four card payments are now contactless. Gareth Shaw, money expert at consumer group Which?, told the BBC: 'There are still questions around the security of these cards. 'Card companies must be responsible for striking a better balance between convenience and security.' Andrew Bailey, chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority, said: 'The overall risk is low and added: 'We have been urgently working with card schemes and banks to ensure this issue is fixed.' Contactless card fraud accounts for 1.1 per cent of the total card fraud. In 2016, overall card fraud amounted to £618million, an increase of nine per cent on 2015. Richard Koch, head of policy at The UK Cards Association, said: 'All contactless cards contain robust security features including an in-built security check which triggers the need to enter a Pin at certain points. 'Customers are fully protected against any losses and will never be left out of pocket in the unlikely event they are the victim of this type of fraud, unlike if they lose cash.' Rapid growth in the use of contactless cards means cash will be overtaken as Britain's most frequently used payment method by the end of 2018, according to a report by Payments UK. It forecasts that debit cards will become the most frequently used payment method in late 2018, three years earlier than previously predicted due in large part to the increasing popularity of contactless. However, cash was still the most frequently used payment method in 2016, used for 15.4billion payments. Back in 2015, Which? warned that stealing data from contactless cards was easy while self-dubbed honest thief James Freedman also criticised contactless and cuts the chip from his cards.
