Total transactions at payment card networks grew 6.8% from 2014 to 2015, but the estimated losses due to fraud soared over previous estimates, the Federal Reserve Board reported Wednesday.
Payment card networks process 60.6 billion debit and general-use prepaid card transactions in 2015, the Fed said. The total value of those transactions reached $2.31 trillion in 2015.
The 6.8% growth was similar to growth over the previous three years.
However, across all debit and general-use prepaid card transactions, fraud losses are estimated to have reached $2.41 billion, a 44% increase from the estimate in 2013. The huge increase was the result of a 28% increase in average fraud losses as a share of transaction value and a 12% increase in the value of total transactions.
The Fed report was required under the Electronic Fund Transfer Act.
Dual-message networks, which typically process signature-authenticated transactions accounted for 65.5% of the total by volume.
Card-not-present transactions accounted for 14.5% of the transactions in 2015, the Fed said. Card-not-present volume grew more than twice as fast as card-present volume. The average transaction value of those transactions was $70.76 in 2015, more than twice as high as the value for card-present transactions.
Interchange fees across all cards totaled $18.4 billon, with the average transaction reaching $0.23 in 2015. The average network fee per transaction stood at $0.102, little changed from 2013.
The covered issuers’ cost of authorizing, clearing and settling debit card transactions—excluding fraud losses—varied across respondents in 2015. The median issuer had an average ACS cost of 12.3 cents and at the 75th percentile, the issuer had an average cost of 30.5 cents. The overall average ACS cost per transaction was 4.2 cents per transaction, down from 4.6 cents in 2013.
