UK Finance has released the Dedicated Card and Payment Crime Unit (DCPCU) annual report.
The unit, formed as a partnership between UK Finance, the City of London Police and the Metropolitan Police Service together with the Home Office, is described as being “a unique, proactive and fully operational police unit with a national remit to investigate, target and, where appropriate, arrest and seek successful prosecution of offenders responsible for card and payment fraud crimes.”
It is run by a Detective Chief Inspector “with a team of officers and support staff who work alongside banking industry fraud investigators.”
In 2023 the work of the unit saw 149 subjects “arrested or interviewed under caution, 68 offenders convicted and 24,288 compromised UK card numbers recovered from active criminal gangs.”
This, and other activity, resulted in “over £33 million worth of customers’ money being saved.”
Additionally, as part of its protection work the team “made over 200 education and awareness presentations to the industry and the public, and over 17,000 people attended a DCPCU training session or event.”
For further stats and detail on the incredible work the unit does please see the report here.
As covered, UK Finance is a trade association for the UK banking and financial services sector, formed on 1 July 2017.
It represents over 300 firms in the UK “providing credit, banking, markets and payment-related services.”
The association formulates policy “for its members, advocates those policies with HM Government, regulators and the media, and supports industry collaboration in the interests of efficiency and better customer outcomes.”
Its founder Chairman was and remains Bob Wigley.
It was the result of a merger of “the British Bankers’ Association, Payments UK, the Council of Mortgage Lenders, the UK Cards Association and the Asset Based Finance Association.”
As reported recently, the UK has reached 150 million contactless cards issued, according to an update from UK Finance.
UK Finance’s Card Spending Update for March 2024 shows “that contactless cards now account for 93 percent of those in issue.”
UK Finance recently released its card spending data for March 2024, “covering the monthly value and volume of transactions across debit and credit cards.”
The data shows the number of contactless cards “in issue in the UK topped 150 million (150,172,000) for the first time in March 2024.”
This means that contactless cards now “make up 93 percent of the cards in issue in the UK.”
There were 1.59 billion contactless card transactions “in March, 5.9 percent more than in March 2023.”
Within this total:
- The number of contactless debit card transactions (1.364 billion) was 5.3% higher than March 2023.
- The number of contactless credit card transactions (225 million) was 9.3% higher than March 2023.
- This means contactless payments accounted for 76% of all debit card transactions and 63% of all credit card transactions made during March 2024.
- The total value of contactless transactions was £25.1 billion in March, a 10.2% increase compared to March 2023.
- Total spending across all cards, including contactless, online and chip and pin was £75.8 billion and there was a total of 2.2 billion debit and credit card transactions made in the month.
