Fraudsters are increasingly using pilfered credit-card numbers and phishing attacks to prey on overwhelmed consumers and banks during the coronavirus pandemic, the Wall Street Journal reported. There has been a big jump in attempted credit- and debit-card fraud since coronavirus shut down the U.S. economy earlier this year, according to Fidelity National Information Services Inc., known as FIS, which assists about 3,200 U.S. banks with fraud monitoring. The dollar volume of attempted fraudulent transactions rose 35 percent in April from a year earlier, FIS said, a trend that appears to be continuing in May. Most of the fraudulent transactions were caught before they hit cardholders’ accounts, FIS said, but the spike in attempts presents another challenge for consumers and their lenders muddling through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Credit-card purchases have fallen over the past two months, and millions of out-of-work borrowers have stopped making their monthly payments. A rise in successful fraud attempts could lead to higher losses for card issuers and, ultimately, higher costs for consumers.
