Hong Kong is most popular target for digital fraudsters amid pickup in online payments: TransUnion report

Hong Kong consumers and businesses are the most popular targets for fraudsters seizing upon increased rates of digital payments, according to data from American consumer credit reporting agency TransUnion.

For Hong Kong consumers monitored by the company, the ratio of digital transactions flagged for suspected fraud was about 18 per cent for the first half of 2023, higher than any other region, while the overall volume of suspected fraudulent transactions increased 57 per cent over the same period.

“The increasing acceptance of digital services and prevalence of spam calls has significantly contributed to the growth in fraud loss [in Hong Kong],” said Jerry Ying, chief product officer at TransUnion Asia-Pacific, in a release related to the findings.

The TransUnion report is based on proprietary information from its fraud solution service TruValidate, and includes data from over one billion individual consumers across more than 30 countries.

The rate of suspected digital fraud was based on interactions in which TransUnion users were either denied a transaction in real time due to fraudulent indicators or where transactions were found to be fraudulent after a manual review process, as opposed to all assessed transactions.

The company also released a survey that found that 6 per cent of professional Hong Kong respondents had fallen victim to fraud in Hong Kong between April and July, while 32 per cent of respondents reported that they had been targets of unsuccessful fraud attempts.