FICO: Debit card compromises skyrocketed in 2016

Payment card theft continues to wreak havoc on retailers and shoppers, alike.



In fact, the number of debit cards compromised at United States-based ATMs and merchants rose 70% in 2016, while the number of hacked card readers at U.S. ATMs, restaurants and merchants rose 30% — the highest level in the history of the FICO Card Alert Service, which monitors hundreds of thousands of ATMs and other readers in the U.S.



Not only do these statistics represent the highest level of card theft in the history of the report, it also represents a 546% increase in compromised ATMs from 2014 to 2015.



For example, in 2015, the most compromises occurred at non-bank ATMs, such as those in convenience stores. About 60% of compromises were at non-bank ATMs, with the rest occurring at bank ATMs or point-of-sale (POS) devices, such as card payment machines at retailers. (These figures cover only card fraud occurring at physical devices, not online card fraud, the study said.)



The average duration of a compromise continued to fall — on average, an ATM or POS device would be compromised for 11 days, compared to 14 days in 2015. The 2016 average duration is less than a third of the aver-age duration in 2014, 36 days. The average number of cards affected by a single compromise was cut in half, the study reported.



"As the last few years have proven, skimming technology and know-how have improved and are more accessible to the general population, so we will continue to see increases in compromises and the speed at which they occur," said TJ Horan, VP of fraud solutions at FICO. "With some of the confusion we still have at various POS checkout locations, it's still im-portant for consumers to be on alert.”