The European Parliament’s civil liberties, justice, and home affairs committee today backed new proposals to combat credit card fraud and counterfeiting. The new law will also cover other non-cash payments such as direct debits, mobile payments, or transactions involving virtual currencies.

 

 

“Digitisation has completely changed how we pay for things. We are using cash less and less and using credit cards and other forms of payments instead. This makes our lives more convenient but it has also led to a huge increase in cases of fraud and counterfeiting. Although precise figures are lacking at the EU level, the European Commission estimates the annual cost of fraud with non-cash payments to be around 2 billion euros. This is a huge amount and will only increase as we pay for more things online and with contactless payment methods.

 

“Our current rules are from 2001 and do not address the many new technological developments that have taken place since then, such as the use of virtual currencies. These new proposals will help address that and provide greater protections for the victims of cybercrime. We have managed to strengthen the proposals put forward by the European Commission. We have increased the level of assistance provided to victims of non-cash fraud, taking into account knock-on effects such as reputational damage or loss of credit rating. We have also included proposals to facilitate the reporting of crime, including the setting of national secure online fraud reporting systems, as well as increasing the involvement of Eurojust and Europol in the exchange of information on cross border crime.

 

“We will push to finalise these laws as quickly as possible to ensure that European consumers are well protected.”