Global: EBA publishes fraud taxonomy

The taxonomy has been developed by the EBA’s expert group on payment fraud-related topics. According to the association, it is designed to provide a “simplified and straightforward framework to describe fraud scenarios related to all kinds of payments, including card transactions”.

The hope is that the taxonomy will be used by banks to develop some common terminology around payment fraud that will then make it easier for them to share data and intelligence. This intelligence can then be used to inform consumers and, ultimately, reduce fraud levels in Europe’s payments market.

“A common vocabulary for fraud types is an important prerequisite for sharing intelligence or data with your peers for fraud prevention and detection purposes,” said Thomas Egner, EBA secretary general.

“Our fraud taxonomy enables payments experts to identify the who, how and what of different fraud scenarios and to separate the contact methods used by fraudsters from the actual tricks they apply.”

The move from the EBA comes just days after the EC announced that it would make instant payments available to all EU and EEA countries in a bid to boost consumer convenience, increase cash flow and rival the dominance of Visa and Mastercard in the payments market.

However industry association Payments Europe pushed back against the EC’s plan, stating that the compressed timelines could threaten the safety of transactions.

The EBA’s taxonomy has relied on definitions already publicly available, where possible, and implementation will initially focus on three use case areas – fraud reporting; intelligence sharing; and data sharing.

It will be updated on a yearly basis and is available via the EBA website at https://www.abe-eba.eu/publications/.