Bad actors coin it in as card identity theft losses skyrocketing

Brits under attack from digital criminals with record ID thefts

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Card identity theft in the UK has exploded by more than 50% in a single year, with losses hitting a staggering £79.1 million in 2023, figures show.

The number of reported incidents almost doubled, from 82,000 to over 142,000, as fraudsters adopted increasingly sophisticated methods to exploit weaknesses in payment systems and personal data security.

Experts are now warning that identity theft is the fastest-growing type of fraud in the UK, with a 74% surge in reported incidents compared to 2022.

The findings come from a detailed analysis by financial insights group Investing in the Web, based on national banking and payment data. They show that identity theft is just the tip of a growing iceberg, with nearly every category of fraud seeing steep rises last year.