site.btaBank Card Skimming Increases in Bulgaria, Reaches Lv 8 Mln in 2013

Bank Card Skimming Increases in Bulgaria, Reaches Lv 8 Mln in 2013

Sofia, October 14 (BTA) - On the background of an increasing use
of bank cards in Bulgaria, skimming is becoming an ever bigger
problem both in this country and abroad. The losses from this
type of fraud in Bulgaria amounted to 7.7 million leva in 2012
and to 8 million leva in 2013, said Skim Port, a Bulgarian
company which has created a sticker that protects debit and
credit cards from being copied and drained.

According to a survey sponsored by the McAfee software company
and quoted by Reuters in mid-2014, cyber crime costs the world
economy around 445 billion dollars and the losses related to
personal information, such as stolen data from credit cards, are
calculated at 150 billion dollars.

Skimming is the cloning or copying of a bank card. Skimming
devices are not expensive: they usually cost around several tens
of leva and are used for stealing data from bank cards that
have only a magnetic strip. Most bank cards in the United States
are of this type, which is why the largest amounts of money are
drained in the US. Contemporary cards with a chip are harder to
copy, the experts say.

The banking statistics show that the volume of transactions in
Bulgaria in 2013 exceeded 20 billion leva. The forecasts for
2014 and 2015 show that this volume will continue to increase by
nearly 1.5 billion leva a year. In 2018 the total volume of
transactions in the country is expected to reach the record-high
27 billion leva.

According to information of the Bulgarian National Bank, quoted
by the Skim Port company, Bulgarians have 7.33 million cards,
the majority of which are Visa Electron (2.94 million) and
Maestro (2.6 million leva). The ratio between credit and debit
cards is 1:7, the central bank's statistics also show.