Identity theft is set to rise in the UK as initiatives such as chip and PIN make it increasingly difficult for fraudsters to commit card crime, predicts market analyst Datamonitor.
Figures from the Association for Payment Clearing Services (Apacs) released earlier this year showed that fraud committed on plastic cards fell for the first time in eight years.
Karina Purang, financial analyst at Datamonitor, says the fall in card crime shows that the efforts in preventing card fraud have finally paid off.
"Neural network systems have become standard across the cards industry to detect unusual spending patterns and a number of bodies, such as the Dedicated Cheque and Plastic Crime Unit, have been established to combat card fraud," says Purang.
But Datamonitor says the introduction of EMV will force criminals to look for more elaborate ways of committing fraud, namely identity theft.
ID theft is difficult to tackle because it depends on how consumers dispose of financial documents. Datamonitor says consumers usually do not discover that their identity has been stolen until they make a credit application which is turned down, or until they check their credit record.