Ukrainians’ accounts being robbed twice as often: main fraud schemes

Losses from fraudulent operations with payment cards of Ukrainians are rapidly increasing: in 2022, the volume increased by 46% (to 481 million UAH – 11,052,694 euros), and from 2023 it almost doubled, reaching 833 million UAH (19,141,153 euros). This is the amount stolen from people’s accounts.

This information was reported by the National Bank in an internal letter No. 57-0008/47938 to financial institutions and postal service operators (“Ukrposhta”, “NovaPay”).

In the letter, the NBU stated that 80% of card fraud cases involve social engineering, where people are deceived into providing their card details, while only 20% involve other methods: hacking/fake websites, card theft/forgery, etc.

“Specifically, fraudsters trick clients into providing data to gain access to payment applications/internet banking of the payment service provider, tokenize the client’s card in Google/Apple Pay e-wallets on their own device, create a duplicate SIM card in the form of an eSIM of the client’s financial phone number, and subsequently conduct transactions,” the NBU letter stated.

Bankers reported that currently, fraudsters most often use two schemes to deceive Ukrainians and steal funds from their accounts.

The first scheme involves informing a person that they have won a prize/drawing, and they want to transfer the winnings to their card, for which the card details are needed.

The second scheme is referred to as the “lost package”: fraudsters send mass SMS messages about a postal shipment, stating that the recipient cannot receive the package due to an incorrect address and asking them to specify the correct location on their website. The site is fake but looks very similar to the real one, collecting data for the scammers. They ask to fill in fields with the address and pay a small amount for reshipping, usually 15-20 UAH. People often agree to this symbolic payment, believing they will receive the package, and enter their card details and CVV code. This information is enough to later empty the victim’s account.

The NBU is aware of these key schemes, and along with the aforementioned letter No. 57-0008/47938, it sent a special questionnaire to banks to understand how they investigate card fraud cases and generally combat it. The NBU demanded all answers be provided by July 27, 2024. After reviewing the responses, the NBU promised to issue new recommendations on combating card theft.