Bank card fraud: a decline in the number of transactions with a significant increase in the amount of losses
In 2025, Ukrainians lost UAH 1.4 billion due to fraudulent transactions with payment cards. According to the National Bank of Ukraine, it recorded 256 thousand illegal transactions during the year, as a result of which clients suffered financial losses.
At first glance, the statistics do not look so alarming, because the number of such transactions has even decreased. Compared to 2024, incidents decreased by 5%, or by 13.3 thousand cases. However, these figures hide a much more dangerous trend: fraudsters commit crimes less often, but the amounts of losses of Ukrainians are becoming larger.
The most telling signal is the sharp increase in the average amount of one illegal transaction. If in 2024 it was UAH 4,247, then in 2025 it jumped to UAH 5,536. This is 30% more than a year ago. It was this jump that pushed the total amount of losses up – by 24%.
For every million payment card transactions in Ukraine, there were 27 fraudulent transactions. This is 14% less than a year earlier. At the same time, the relative level of losses has increased: now there are UAH 198 of losses per million payment transactions, which is already 14% more than in 2024.
A noticeable role in this dynamics is played by increased protection from regulators and payment providers. Multi-factor authentication and stricter rules for confirming transactions complicate the work of fraudsters. However, even under such conditions, a significant part of the losses, as before, is associated with violation of elementary security rules during online payments.
In addition, the scale of the problem is evidenced by data from law enforcement agencies. Over 8 months of 2025, more than 35 thousand criminal proceedings were opened in Ukraine under Art. 190 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine “Fraud”. On average, this is 4.5 thousand new cases per month.
At the same time, only 21% of such proceedings reach the court. The largest number of cases is currently opened in Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv regions. As a result, 2025 showed a harsh reality: there have been fewer fraudulent attacks, but each of them is increasingly costing Ukrainians much more.
