BI Intelligence reports fraud costs rose 38% in 2014

After the amount of breaches last year, it should come as no surprise that retailers took a financial hit. According to BI‘s analysis of a recent Lexis Nexis report, the cost of fraud rose to $32 billion in 2014. Additionally, “fraud as a percentage of retail sales increased as well, likely as a result of massive data breaches at Target, Home Depot, Nieman Marcus, and others.”

Although merchants are upgrading to EMV, BI warns that this technology will not be enough on its own to protect against fraud. Additional layers of security such as point-to-point encryption (P2PE) and tokenization are essential to reducing the instance of cyber crime.

Check out the full study here.