Card fraud in Cyprus cost nearly €4 million in the first six months of 2025 — a 66% jump in value and a 30% rise in the number of incidents compared with the same period a year earlier, according to data published by the Central Bank of Cyprus.
Card payments accounted for 92% of all fraud cases, and a card transaction made across borders was 24 times more likely to be fraudulent than one made domestically.
The figures show approximately 15,000 card fraud cases in H1 2025, out of a total of 16,000 fraud incidents across all payment methods. Fraud involving all other payment methods combined amounted to roughly 1,000 transactions. No fraud incidents were recorded for cheque payments.
Why Cyprus is more exposed than the eurozone
Cyprus’s 92% share of card fraud is higher than the eurozone average of 81%. The Central Bank attributed the gap to the more widespread use of card payments in Cyprus.
While card fraud volume across the eurozone remained broadly stable between H1 2024 and H1 2025, Cyprus recorded a 30% increase over the same period.
Credit cards were hit harder than debit cards. The fraud rate on credit card payments stood at 0.017% in H1 2025, compared with 0.012% for debit cards.
The Central Bank said credit cards typically carry higher spending limits, making them a more attractive target for fraudsters.
Two very different types of fraud
For card payments, the fraud is almost always technical: unauthorised transactions — card data theft, card loss, and physical card theft — accounted for 97% of all card fraud incidents.
E-money payments followed the same pattern, with unauthorised transactions making up 100% of cases.
Credit transfers tell a different story. There, the dominant threat is human manipulation — fraudsters tricking account holders into making a payment directly to them — which accounted for 59% of credit transfer fraud by volume. Unauthorised transactions made up the remaining 41%.
The cross-border problem
Although most payment transactions in Cyprus are domestic, the majority of fraud incidents involve cross-border payments, where the payer’s bank is in Cyprus and the recipient’s bank is abroad.
Card fraud was 24 times more likely to occur in a cross-border transaction than a domestic one.
The Central Bank attributed this to differing regulatory frameworks across jurisdictions and inadequate cross-border cooperation between banks and other parties involved in fraud prevention — a gap, the data suggests, that fraudsters are actively exploiting.