Royal Bank of Scotland halts 1,959 fraudulent sales a day

The Royal Bank of Scotland has revealed that it has prevented a record breaking number of fraudulent transactions in the run up to Christmas as shoppers buy more in the busiest retail period of the year.

Shoppers made 310 million credit and debit card transactions between Black Friday and last Thursday. Picture: TSPL

RBS figures show that they have prevented more than one fraudulent transaction every minute during the peak shopping period.

In a period of 20 days between 29 November and 19 December, RBS flagged and prevented 39,181 transactions, which is the equivalent of around 1,959 fraudulent transactions per day and 1.36 every minute.

In monetary terms, since Black Friday RBS customers have sent £11,816 million in total and out of that amount the bank have prevented customers from losing over £11.64 million.

On a typical day outwith peak shopping periods there are around 1,500 fraudulent transactions attempted.

During the peak period the average number of flagged transactions per day increases around 33 per cent.

Between Black Friday and last Thursday, last minute shoppers made just under 310 million credit and debit card transactions which was an increase on the same period last year where shoppers processed 251 million transactions.

The busiest day for fraudsters was 10 December, when RBS prevented 2,595 fraudulent transactions across both debit and credit cards.

Jason Costain, head of fraud, Royal Bank of Scotland said: “We’ve just seen one of busiest shopping weekends of the year and we have been working around the clock to keep our customers safe and secure. At this time of year customers should also be extra vigilant of scams and if a deal looks too good to be true it probably is.”

The bank has also advised customers of tips to prevent scams such as to be aware of counterfeits on social media and look out for bad spelling and grammar mistakes on websites posing as retailers.