European Card Fraud - Hungary

Worrying Fraud Spikes Buck the European Trend

The Euromonitor International data for Hungary shows huge spikes in fraud losses, up from 1,345M HUF in 2020 to 12,834M HUF in 2025. This is an 854% increase, an astonishing number which will in part be driven by increased card fraud losses but may also reflect improvements in Hungary’s reporting. Given this proportion of increase is not seen across any other country, it does suggest an element of change to data gathering. This may be further suggested by Hungary’s basis points, which sit at 4.69. That’s relatively high compared to the other countries in this report, but still sits fairly comfortably within TRA exemption thresholds. 

Card-not-present fraud is high, making up 56% of all fraud losses. This follows the trend across Europe, with phishing and social engineering driving victims into card information, as well as OTPs. As the Mastercard DPI (Digital Payment Index) 2024 Report showed, SCA has been adopted into Hungarian payment infrastructure, but card tokenization adoption is still growing. This suggests the current state of losses will be made up of non-secure card channels, and Hungarian issuers should take action against this rapidly growing fraud threat as digital payments become more embedded in day-to-day transactional activity across the country. 

Notably, Others fraud takes up 41% of all fraud losses, which is unusual. No other country has Others fraud taking up so much of the overall fraud loss portfolio. Given that so many digital card fraud trends have emerged in the last few years across Europe (phishing , quishing, elaborate scam tactics), it may be the case that some of these frauds are being categorised as Others as they don't at first glance appear to fall into existing categories. Notably, all other card loss types remain very low, totalling 3% of fraud losses and seemingly almost quashed entirely. ID fraud had had no loss data for several years, which is unexpected. ID Fraud is a significant problem (not just across the card space but all elements of the customer lifecycle and product range) and it would be expected that Hungary would have some fraud of this type. Some of this may also have fallen into the Others category.