Daily TribuneTransUnion found that 8.3 percent of digital transactions made by Filipino consumers in 2023 were suspected to be digital fraud; this is 6 percent higher than the global suspected digital fraud rate of five percent over the same period as reported in the TransUnion 2024 State of Omnichannel Fraud Report.
Fraudulent transactions in the country continue to rise significantly, even higher compared to the average incidence internationally, global information and insights company TransUnion said in its latest report.
Based on recently released TransUnion proprietary insights, the company found that 8.3 percent of digital transactions made by Filipino consumers in 2023 were suspected to be digital fraud. This is 66 percent higher than the global suspected digital fraud rate of five percent over the same period as reported in the TransUnion 2024 State of Omnichannel Fraud Report.
Further revealed in the report is that the volume of suspected digital fraud globally grew faster than the actual number of digital transactions worldwide.
The volume of suspected digital fraud globally increased 14 percent year-over-year (YoY) in 2023 and 105 percent from 2019 to 2023, outpacing the six percent growth in digital transactions between 2022 and 2023, and 90 percent from 2019 to 2023.
Shift in tactics
Findings from the report also indicated a possible shift in tactics employed by fraudsters attempting to engage with potential victims at an earlier stage in their consumer journey.
For digital transactions where the consumer was in the Philippines, 13.3 percent of transactions associated with account logins were suspected to be digital fraud in 2023.
The second highest percentage of suspected digital fraud in the customer journey was account creation with 3.2 percent of those transactions suspected to be digital fraud.
Occurrence of suspected digital fraud at the initial stages of account login and creation is significantly higher compared to the final financial transaction stage which had a rate of 1.2 percent.
The report further said that the stage usually involves activities such as purchases, withdrawals and deposits, which typically take place towards the end of a customer’s journey.
Account login and creation
“This rise in suspected digital fraud in the account login and creation stages of the consumer journey may represent a paradigm shift of sorts among fraudsters,” said Yogesh Daware, chief commercial officer at TransUnion Philippines.
“Alongside traditional tactics to gain access to and ultimately compromise existing accounts, fraudsters are also increasingly choosing to create new accounts that they can control themselves. As data breaches continue to pose a threat to sensitive or confidential information across various industries in the Philippines, fraudsters could possibly leverage synthetic identities assembled in large part using credentials gathered from such incidents,” he added.
