45 Revealing Credit Card Skimming and Fraud Statistics (2025)

The web is a wonderland. At least, until it suddenly isn’t. Credit cards and digital payment technologies are convenient until they result in identity theft and financial loss. Knowledge is the first line of defense against fraudsters stealing personal information.

In card skimming, criminals overlay or insert card-reading devices into point-of-sale terminals, ATMs, gas pumps, and other devices to read the magnetic strips on cards. Card shimming accomplishes the same thing, but steals information from EMV chips on cards and is harder to detect.

Card-not-present fraud is a blanket term for many forms of identity theft. Fraudsters use stolen information to apply for new cards and assume control of existing accounts.

Security is becoming more sophisticated, but card fraud remains a threat to consumers. Here are 45 revealing credit card skimming and fraud statistics to highlight the alarming trends associated with this complex problem.

1. American credit cards are more likely to be involved in fraud than cards worldwide. Cards with U.S. owners were responsible for 25.29% of total card volume worldwide but 42.32% of worldwide fraud losses.¹

2. A 2024 forecast predicted total U.S. card-not-present (CNP) fraud losses would exceed $41 billion in 2025.²

3. Card skimming is in growth mode. The number of U.S. debit cards involved in skimming rose by 77% from roughly 70,000 cards to nearly 120,000.³

4. The biggest consumer scam losses of 2024 occurred through bank transfer and payment fraud ($2 billion). Cryptocurrency scams were the second-highest loss generator ($1.2 billion).⁴

5. Experts often say older people are more vulnerable to card fraud than younger people. However, 44% aged 20 to 29 in this survey reported losing money to fraud, versus 24% aged 70 to 79.⁵

6. Card skimming impacted nearly 3,000 unique financial institutions, a 79% year-over-year increase.⁶

7. A study sponsored by card network Mastercard projects global chargebacks due to fraudulent transaction disputes to rise to $41.69 billion by 2028.⁷

8. Consumers reported 416,582 incidents of credit card-related identity theft.⁸

9. Nearly one-third (65%) of U.S. credit and credit card holders have been fraud victims at some point in their lives — up from 58% the previous year and amounting to about 151 million Americans.⁹

10. Almost 1 in 3 consumers (29%) reported suspicions of having experienced card skimming at some point in their lives. More than a third (35%) reported they knew someone who had been a victim.¹⁰

11. Synthetic card fraud — using a real person’s stolen information, such as their Social Security number or date of birth, and combining it with fabricated personal information to create a card account  — is an increasingly prevalent financial crime. An analysis showed that the retail industry experienced a 61% increase in synthetic account fraud volume year over year.¹¹

12. The cat-and-mouse game between fraudsters and security advocates continues. On Cyber Monday 2024 (the first Monday after the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday), the Visa card network blocked nearly 85% more suspected fraudulent transactions than the same holiday the previous year.¹²

13. Along with ACH bank transactions, transactions using debit cards were involved in more than 42,000 identity theft reports to the Federal Trade Commission in 2024.⁴

14. Leading card network Visa reported a 200% spike in global card fraud transactions on the weekend after 2024’s U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. It partly attributed the rise to the adoption of AI by fraudsters.¹²

15. Fewer older consumers report fraud losses, with 24% of 2024 reports from individuals aged 70-79 and 44% from individuals aged 20-29. But the older Americans reported higher median losses than all other groups.⁴

16. Card fraud criminals constantly look for fresh opportunities. Three-quarters (75%) of card-skimming compromise sites were new locations.⁶

17. The Federal Trade Commission received 449,032 reports in 2024 from consumers who reported fraud either when using an existing card or applying for a new one.⁴

18. Credit-card-based identity theft reports related to new accounts decreased 7% year-over-year to 381,122. Reports associated with existing accounts rose 14% to 44,855.⁸

19. Credit cards were the most frequent payment method in fraud report incidents.⁸

20. A forecast estimated that total global losses from card fraud would increase from $33.45 billion in 2022 to $43.47 billion in 2028.⁷

21. ATM skimming statistics have a state-based component. ATM skimming compromise events in Virginia, Texas, New Jersey, Florida, and Colorado rose 50% or more year-over-year. Virginia and Texas joined the list of the top five ATM compromise states.³

22. Among Americans surveyed in 2024 who reported feeling they had been victimized by card skimming at some point, 60% reported it happened at the gas pump.¹⁰

23. Card skimming is a crime of opportunity. Almost 9 in 10 (87%) card-skimming events lasted two weeks or less, and 64% lasted a week or less.⁶

24. Investment-related scams generally result in cardholder losses. The Federal Trade Commission reported in 2024 that 79% of people who reported them suffered negatively. The median amount lost was more than $9,000.⁴

25. Identity theft reports by state vary widely. States that have seen large increases in synthetic account fraud include Nebraska: (+54%), Vermont (+48%), Washington, D.C. (+46%), Tennessee (+40%), and Kansas (+39%).¹¹

26. Some states are seeing decreases in the number of ATM compromises. ATM skimming compromises in California, Washington, and Maryland decreased 50% or more from the first half of 2022 to the first half of 2023. California is still the state with the highest number of ATM skimming incidents.³

27. Auto lenders are most likely to be victims of synthetic card fraud, with losses totaling $2 billion. Bank credit cards ($1 billion) and retail credit cards ($121 million) are the next-highest categories.¹¹

28. Card compromise reports associated with skimming increased 452%. The total number of compromised cards increased by 368% to more than 161,000.⁶

29. More than a third (36%) of Americans surveyed in 2024 said they don’t know what card skimming is, and 29% said they wouldn’t know what to do if they learned they were victimized.¹⁰

30. Synthetic fraud attempts in the telecommunications industry grew 89.2% year over year to a suspected fraud attempt volume of 2.4%.¹¹

31. FICO, the company that produced popular credit-scoring models, reported that the number of debit cards affected by skimming increased 96% year over year in 2023.¹⁰

32. A total of 51% of credit card users reported experiencing two or more fraudulent charges in 2025, up from 45% the year before.⁹

33. Debit card compromise reports rose 20% year-over-year from 525 to 625.³

Card-skimming criminals target certain states. Almost three-fourths (70%) of fraud cases related to skimming occurred in California (38%), New York (16%), Pennsylvania (6%), Florida (5%), and Washington (5%).⁶

34. The median fraud charge rose to $79 in 2022, up 27% from $62 in 2021, according to a study published in 2023.⁹

35. Skimming events impacted 185 cards each on average.⁶

36. Consumers reported more than $12 billion in losses to the Federal Trade Commission in 2024, including $5 billion due to investment-related scams.⁴

37. California reported the most cases of identity theft, at 42,780. Following were Florida (40,072), Texas (37,690), New York (18,668), and Pennsylvania (11,772).¹¹

38. An upward trend in debit cards impacted per compromise event indicates that criminals are growing more effective in their work. Data showed a 48% year-over-year increase in the average number of cards affected per compromise.³

39. The Federal Trade Commission’s Consumer Sentinel Network accepted more than 6.47 million consumer reports. Fraud accounted for 2.6 million, identity theft for 1.1 million, and other concerns for the rest.⁴

40. Skimming at bank ATMs rose 109% year-over-year. Bank ATMs represented about 33% of compromised locations in the second-year figures; non-bank ATMs were more likely to be victimized.³

41. Nearly two-thirds (66%) of consumers responding to a 2024 survey reported buying gas only at certain trusted stations to protect themselves against card skimming.¹⁰

42. The Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach Metropolitan Statistical Area reported 244 identity theft cases per 100,000 residents — the highest rate among statistical areas.¹¹

43. Military members are not immune to card fraud. The Federal Trade Commission received more than 99,000 complaints from military members in 2024. Of those, nearly 45,000 were imposter scams that cost victims nearly $200 million collectively.⁴

Criminals have so many ways to siphon data and personal information — from skimming and shimming to card-not-present fraud and beyond — that using cash instead of cards may seem like the best option.

These statistics illuminate the stakes in the continual cat-and-mouse game between criminals out to steal data and personal information for financial gain and security engineers, public stakeholders, and consumers dedicated to stopping them.

¹ https://nilsonreport.com/newsletters/1232
² https://www.vpnranks.com/resources/credit-card-fraud-statistics
³ https://www.fico.com/blogs/card-skimming-and-other-fraud-types-continue-grow-us-data
⁴ https://consumer.ftc.gov/consumer-alerts/2025/03/top-scams-2024
⁵ https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/federal.trade.commission/viz/ConsumerSentinel/Infographic
⁶ https://www.fico.com/blogs/us-card-skimming-grew-nearly-5x-2022-new-fico-data-shows
⁷ https://www.techradar.com/pro/businesses-globally-set-to-lose-usd15-billion-in-2025-because-of-fraudulent-chargebacks-says-mastercard-heres-how-it-impacts-you-me-and-everyone
⁸ https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/CSN-Annual-Data-Book-2023.pdf
⁹ https://www.security.org/digital-safety/credit-card-fraud-report
¹⁰ https://www.lendingtree.com/credit-cards/study/card-skimming-victim
¹¹ https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/research/identity-theft-credit-card-fraud-statistics
¹² https://usa.visa.com/about-visa/newsroom/press-releases.releaseId.21101.html