The rise of cybercrime and theft of consumers' data are evident in the card fraud figures from 2014 to 2015, according to a report from data analytics firm FICO. The most severe rise in card fraud was in the UK, which saw an 18 per cent increase in card fraud losses, half of which came from ecommerce fraud. FICO added that Card Not Present was the dominant fraud type across the 19 countries surveyed.  "Europe pushed criminals towards Card CNP through the introduction of strong authentication for 'face-to-face' transactions with the rollout of chip and PIN," FICO said. The  "connected business landscape" also played a part, as increasing amounts of data - including payment data - are collected by more and more entities, creating new vulnerabilities for criminals to exploit. Global bank rating trends were negative again in the first half of 2016 for the fourth consecutive six-month period, according to Fitch Ratings' half-year report. Negative outlooks (22 per cent) far outweighed Positives (five per cent), a level not seen since 2009, the agency said. Emerging market banks attracted the majority of negative ratings, heavily influenced by rating actions in Brazil, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria. Banks in developed markets had 16 rating upgrades, the highest number since before the global financial crisis, thanks to  "significant progress in reducing legacy assets and strengthening capitalisation ... [although] banks that remain weighed down by large asset quality problems [eg, Italy] could be downgraded over the next one to two years," Fitch said. Digital commerce and fintech sector analysts Juniper Research estimate the global value of contactless point of sale terminal transactions conducted via cards, mobile and wearables will approach US$500 billion annually by 2017, up from an estimated US$321 billion this year.  "However, the low value nature of contactless payments means that it will only represent just five per cent of the total value of all POS transactions in 2017," Juniper added in a new whitepaper. Other key forecasts include: contactless cards will represent one in every two payment cards in issue by 2020; and smartphone and tablet-based mPOS terminals will handle 20 per cent of all retail POS transaction value by 2021.