Erste Bank registered a total of 7,300 fraud attempts in the first quarter of this year, with criminals aiming to obtain 2.8 billion forints, according to Zsiga Krisztina, Erste’s deputy CEO for risk management.
- 5,900 of the incidents were linked to bank cards, with an aggregate value of about 0.5 billion forints.
- 1,400 attempts involved bank transfers, where criminals tried to seize roughly 2.3 billion forints.
Although card frauds are more frequent by count, transfer scams carry a much higher monetary risk: the average amount involved in transfer attempts exceeded 1.6 million forints between January and March 2024, while the average loss per card fraud case was about 84,000 forints.
Erste says it can now filter out eight out of ten fraud attempts; in the first quarter the bank therefore prevented the theft of 2.3 billion out of the 2.8 billion forints targeted. The bank also notes that the number of attempted frauds on its customers is lower than would be expected based on its market share, and that its share of prevented attempts is higher than that market position would suggest.
Successful schemes for criminals have typically been transfer scams in which the perpetrator effectively "holds the victim’s hand" and walks them through the payment process. Perpetrators frequently use psychological manipulation to get customers to initiate payments themselves. Investment scams have become a common method recently: fraudsters posing as advisers encourage victims to invest initially small and later larger sums, often showing the victim a fake website where the money appears to grow. Criminals sometimes even coach victims on what to tell bank staff if the bank queries a suspicious transaction.
Erste has been operating and continuously improving its real-time fraud detection system for years, and is currently developing an artificial intelligence–based, self-learning fraud prevention solution. The bank’s digital platform also offers multiple protective features: setting transfer and card limits, notifications about transaction or authentication data changes, and push-message authentication for outgoing calls are among the tools used to safeguard customers’ funds.
According to the bank, these technological and communication measures help it detect and block the majority of card and transfer fraud attempts in time, protecting significant sums on behalf of its customers.
