Mobile payment finally takes off in France, seven years after its arrival. But fraud is also increasingly important. Explanations.
Paying with your phone is becoming more and more common. Contactless payment by smartphone, launched in 2015, is developing, even if it is still very much in the minority.
According to data from the Observatory for the Security of Payment Means (OSMP) released on Tuesday, 330 million mobile transactions were recorded in the first half of 2022, not far from the 357 million recorded for the whole of 2022. mobile payment now represents 4.6% of nearby card payments.
A finding corroborated by a recent study by the Cetelem Observatory. This noted that the use of mobile payment is anchored in the habits of consumers, and in particular among those under 35 years of age. 29% of them cite mobile payment as the payment method they prefer to use in-store. This is twice as much as in the general population (15%). The average amount of the transaction by mobile payment is 21 euros, against 16 euros for contactless by credit card.
Fraud rate on the rise
But the investigation of the OSMP, an organization attached to the Banque de France, raises a point of vigilance. The contactless payment fraud rate in general increased, rising to 0.016% in the 1st half of 2022 compared to 0.013% in 2021. An increase largely attributable to the increase in mobile payment fraud (0.081% in the 1st half of 2022 compared to 0.074% in 2021).
Among all contactless card payments, mobile payment remains a minority in the amounts exchanged (9.9% of total contactless payments), but represents 51% of fraud amounts in the first half of 2022, details the OSMP .
Massive fraud on Apple Pay
The observatory stresses that fraud on mobile payments is essentially linked to fraudulent card registrations stolen or usurped in mobile wallets. This is what explains in particular the massive fraud on Apple Pay.
In some banks, the method used to activate a new card in an iPhone is indeed lacking in terms of security. This is what leads the OSMP to recall that enrolling a card in a mobile wallet is conditional on prior and systematic strong authentication of the bearer through the banking application of his bank. The Observatory will ensure that issuers and mobile payment solutions that are still non-compliant quickly change their enrollment procedures, underlines the OSMP report.
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