Of the 74 percent of companies who reported attempted or achieved
payment fraud in 2016, 32 percent experienced corporate/commercial card fraud, down
from 39 percent in 2015, according to a January survey by the Association for
Financial Professionals, in association with JPMorgan, of 547 U.S. companies. AFP
speculated that this could mean that banks have improved their methods for
protecting card data and/or are quicker to cancel cards when data breaches
occur.
The report also showed that the number of third parties that
suffered financial loss from corporate/commercial card fraud also declined. A
quarter of card-issuing banks suffered such loss, down from 36 percent in 2015.
Likewise, merchants that reported financial losses from corporate/commercial
card fraud decreased from 21 percent in 2015 to 15 percent in 2016.
At 79 percent of the companies that experienced corporate/commercial
card fraud, hackers and other unknown external parties were guilty
in 2016. Employees committed such fraud at 23 percent of the companies where it
occurred. That's up from 17 percent in 2015, according to the survey. Additionally,
third parties or outsourcers committed corporate/commercial card fraud
at 9 percent of the companies that experienced it in 2016.
For
companies with annual revenue of $1 billion or higher, the portion of
corporate/commercial fraud that owed to employees increased to 31 percent. This
could owe to increased use of corporate/commercial cards and the fact that larger
companies tend to issue more cards to employees, thereby increasing their risk,
said AFP manager of treasury and payments Magnus Carlsson.