The cost to the UK economy of e-commerce fraud is expected to grow by £30 million by 2015 as mobile phones and social networking sites create new opportunities for criminals, PayPoint.net claims.

According to a report conducted by the Centre for Economic and Business Research (Cebr), on behalf of PayPoint.net, the impact of e-commerce fraud on the UK economy is likely to rise by 18 per cent, from £165.2 million in 2011 to £195.3 million in 2015.

The rise of new e-commerce channels: Shoppers Delight or Gangsters Paradise? report states that this is largely due to new payment channels being more vulnerable to fraudulent activity during the years of early adoption, as it takes time to discover and resolve underlying security issues.

According to the report, the growth of mobile and social media shopping is expected to drive total online sales to £33.7 billion by 2015, an annual growth of 4.5 per cent. The report also forecasts that the number of internet users purchasing products via their mobile phones will rise by five million, to 10.5 million, by 2015, while social media is also expected to be a significant growth area, with an additional 2.9 million users making shopping purchases through these channels by 2015. However, this boost to the e-commerce market has a downside, bringing with it a far greater fraud risk.

Michael Norton, managing director of PayPoint.net, comments: “Shopping on a mobile phone or favourite social media site is the next big thing in e-commerce, but criminals are likely to capitalise on poor awareness of the risks by consumers and retailers alike. It will be more important than ever for online retailers to have a robust, traditional e-commerce fraud prevention system in place so that best practice strategies can be rolled out to the new shopping platforms.”

PayPoint.net says their FraudGuard management platform checks each transaction against 35 fraud criteria in real-time, allowing online retailers to fine-tune fraud policies and protect their customers.

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