Payment card fraud fell sharply in Australia last year and is at its lowest level in five years, according to the latest industry research.

The Australian Payments Network said the value of card fraud was down by almost 20 per cent, falling from A$576 million in 2018 to $464 million last year.

The big fall occurred as spending on cards grew by 4 per cent to $819 billion. Fraud represented 56.6 cents per $1000 of card spend – down from 73.1 cents in 2018.

The average value of fraudulent transactions was $123.

All forms of card fraud were down, with fraud on lost or stolen cards down 37 per cent, card-not-present fraud down 7.3 per cent and counterfeit or skimming fraud down 14.3 per cent.

Card-not-present remains the biggest category, with losses of $306 million last year at Australian online merchants and $403 million overall.

AusPayNet said its CNP fraud mitigation framework, which was launched in July last year, has encouraged the uptake of secure technology, such as stronger customer authentication, tokenisation and real-time monitoring.