THE Philippines continues to grapple with elevated rates of digital fraud, a credit reference company said on Tuesday, with suspicious transactions from the country exceeding global averages in the first half.
In an update to its State of Omnichannel Fraud Report, TransUnion said that the country’s suspected digital fraud rate of 13.0 percent remained significantly higher than the global average of 5.2 percent.
In particular, digital interactions originating from the Philippines across online communities — which include forums and dating sites — had the highest suspected digital fraud rate of 18.0 percent.
This was also higher than the global rate of 11.5 percent for the same period.
Digital fraud was most likely to occur during financial transactions, where 31 percent of all attempts were deemed suspicious, followed by account creation at 22 percent.
These findings were said to be aligned with international trends that identified communities as the sector with the highest suspected fraud rates.
Suspected fraud in other industries within the Philippines also surpassed global benchmarks, TransUnion said.
In retail, the country registered a suspected fraud attempt rate of 12.7 percent, compared to the global rate of 7.3 percent, while financial services recorded a lower 6.6 percent — also above the global average of 4.6 percent.
Suspected fraud attempts in logistics (5.7 percent) and the public sector (4.6 percent) were also higher than the global benchmarks of 2.9 and 1.6 percent, respectively.
The rates for travel (0.9 percent) and leisure and telecommunications (0.8 percent), on the other hand, were lower than the global averages of 1.0 percent and 2.4 percent, respectively.
Yogesh Daware, chief commercial officer of TransUnion Philippines, said that as digital platforms grow, they present more opportunities for scammers to exploit.
He noted the importance of educating consumers and businesses on preventive measures to counteract evolving fraud tactics.
“With rising community fraud rates in the Philippines aligning with global findings, there is a need to focus efforts on educating consumers about these types of attacks and disseminating preventive measures that consumers and businesses can take to protect themselves from falling victim,” Daware said.
About 15.4 percent of all account login attempts from the Philippines in the first half of 2024 were suspected to be fraudulent, TransUnion said.
While account creation and transaction stages saw a slight decrease in suspect activity, the firm said that the 3.7 percent and 1.6 percent results highlighted the persistent risk to Filipino consumers conducting online transactions.
The findings echoed concerns from TransUnion’s Q2 2024 Consumer Pulse Study, which found that 70 percent of Filipinos reported being targeted by scams via email, phone or text messages in the last three months, with 10 percent of them having fallen victim.
Phishing remained the most prevalent method of attack, reported by 51 percent of the targeted individuals. Other common tactics included smishing (SMS phishing) at 44 percent, money and gift card scams at 36 percent and fraud by third-party sellers on legitimate ecommerce platforms at 31 percent.
Fraudulent schemes have also evolved to include methods such as vishing (voice phishing), identity theft and account takeovers.
“Protecting customers and businesses from fraud is essential to enabling safe and tailored consumer experiences … despite the good faith efforts by global and local organizations to identify and prevent fraud, fraudsters continue to evolve and it’s vital that fraud prevention methods keep up with the changing times,” Daware said.
“Businesses that aren’t already doing so should ensure that they are taking advantage of fraud prevention technologies such as identity verification, IP intelligence, device reputation and synthetic identity detection as critical components of their fraud prevention programs to stay ahead of evolving threats.”
TransUnion based its digital fraud report on data collected from users of its TruValidate product offering.
Be the first to comment