Why Card-Not-Present Risk Reads as a Different Number Entirely
Every figure below separates card-not-present risk, a merchant taking a payment without the physical card in hand, from card-present risk, a chip or swipe transaction at a physical terminal. That split matters directly to a merchant-services agent, because it is the same split underneath why e-commerce and card-not-present merchants get underwritten differently, priced differently, and held to different reserve terms than a retail storefront running the identical dollar volume in card-present transactions.
Reading a Rate Number Against a Dollar-Value Number
The figures below mix two different measurements on purpose. A basis-point fraud rate describes risk as a share of transaction value, useful for comparing card-not-present against card-present apples to apples. A dollar figure describes the actual scale of fraud loss across the network, useful for understanding how fast the underlying exposure is moving year over year. Neither number should be read as a stand-in for the other.
The Numbers
Card-not-present fraud ran 14.23 basis points of transaction value in 2015, versus 9.32 basis points for card-present payments and ATM withdrawals combined, per the Federal Reserve’s Depository and Financial Institutions Payments Survey.
Federal Reserve, Changes in U.S. Payments Fraud from 2012 to 2016
By a separate card-network survey using updated remote-versus-in-person terminology, remote card payment fraud reached 18.71 basis points of value in 2016, versus 9.34 basis points for in-person card payments.
Federal Reserve, Changes in U.S. Payments Fraud from 2012 to 2016
The dollar value of remote and card-not-present card fraud grew from $3.40 billion in 2015 to $4.57 billion in 2016, a 34.6% one-year increase.
Federal Reserve, Changes in U.S. Payments Fraud from 2012 to 2016
Over the same period, in-person card fraud value declined from $3.68 billion to $2.91 billion, a real divergence as EMV chip adoption rose for in-person transactions.
Federal Reserve, Changes in U.S. Payments Fraud from 2012 to 2016
Even accounting for this growth, the Federal Reserve’s report states payments fraud “remains rare and represents only small fractions of 1 percent of the total value or number of payments” across the industry.
Federal Reserve, Changes in U.S. Payments Fraud from 2012 to 2016
On the dispute side, Visa’s Acquirer Monitoring Program flags a merchant as Merchant-Excessive at a combined fraud-and-dispute ratio of 1.5% (2.2% in the CEMEA region), provided the account also logs at least 1,500 combined fraud and dispute reports in a month, with enforcement in effect since October 1, 2025.
Sources
The external data in this article draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.
- Federal Reserve, Changes in U.S. Payments Fraud from 2012 to 2016
- Chargebacks911, Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program (VAMP)