European Card Fraud - Greece

Lost & Stolen Card Fraud Keeps Greece Under Pressure

Greece’s card fraud losses continued their steep upward climb in 2025, rising a further 15% to reach €32.8M, up from €28.4M in 2024. This extends a striking longer-term trajectory: over the last decade Greek losses have grown more than sixfold from €4.8M, making Greece one of the fastest-deteriorating markets in the study. The country’s basis points now sit at 2.89, one of the higher readings in Europe and a clear signal that fraud is growing disproportionately to genuine card spend, even as card usage in Greece expands rapidly.

As with most of Europe, Card not Present (CNP) fraud is the primary driver of the increase, rising from €20.0M to €22.8M. What continues to mark Greece out from its peers, however, is the unusual persistence and growth of Card Stolen or Lost fraud, which climbed again from €8.0M to €9.6M. This dual pressure is uncommon across the rest of the continent, where physical-card fraud has largely faded.

Several structural factors likely sustain this pattern. Greece combines high in-person card use with a very large seasonal tourism base, widening the attack surface for card interception, skimming and card forgery, while uneven anti-fraud POS controls in some segments leave room for exploitation. The Bank of Greece has flagged the rising number of fraudulent card transactions in its financial stability monitoring, and independent research on Greek cybercrime points to accelerating phishing and e-banking scam activity, with tourism, public administration and banking all expanding the potential target set. Part of the rise in card fraud will also reflect the natural consequence of strongly growing genuine card volumes, but the pace of loss growth outstrips spending growth, which is why the basis-points keep rising.