The value of fraudulent cheque and card payments rose 1.7 per cent over the past financial year but the proportion of fraud to the value of transactions was down.
The Australian Payments Network reported in its latest payment fraud statistics update that the value of fraudulent transactions rose to A$502 million in the 12 months to June.
The fraud rate was 54.7 cents per A$1000 spent in the 12 months to June, down from 57.8 cents in the previous year.
The fraud rate is well below the peak of 73.8 cents per $1000 spent in 2017/18.
AusPayNet said the improvement was a result of the introduction of a fraud mitigation framework for card not present transactions in 2019.
Spending on cards increased by 7.8 per cent to $913.7 billion in 2021/22 and fraud on payment card transactions increased by 1.9 per cent.
Card-not-present fraud accounted for 91 per cent of all fraud on Australian cards, coinciding with a big increase in e-commerce transactions. CNP fraud increased by 2.9 per cent.
CNP fraud involves valid card details being stolen and used to make purchases or payments without the card being present, usually online or by telephone.
The CNP fraud mitigation framework encourages the uptake of secure technology, such as stronger customer authentication, tokenisation and real-time monitoring.
Merchants that consistently exceed agreed fraud threshold targets are required to strengthen customer authentication and apply other measures.