European Card Fraud - Ukraine

Unique Scams Plague Ukraine

The reported losses stayed relatively consistent compared to 2024, with an overall increase of 6% to UAH 179 million. Basis points remain extremely low, rising slightly from 0.28 to 0.4. This performance is one of the best across Europe, which may indicate that there is a gap in fraud marking, as it is clear Ukraine faces intense challenges from threat actors using the war to commit fraud. Card-not-Present fraud is still the dominant fraud type at 70% of all fraud losses. This fraud increase is driven by the global uptick of scam-related incidents, driven by AI technologies. All other fraud types are trending low, with ID theft as the next largest fraud type but still low at 23.7M UAH (13% of fraud losses).

Amid ongoing uncertainty in Ukraine, consumers face unique threats that are causing large losses. While the primary attack vector remains social engineering, in Ukraine scammers frequently impersonate bank security, government officials, or pretend to be war-related charities in order to persuade victims to hand over information and money. The National Bank of Ukraine has reported in 2025 that while cases may have decreased, overall loses have increased by 37%, prompting them to renew their efforts to educate Ukrainian citizens and prevent them from falling prey to social engineering.