EBA identifies fraud in retail payments and over indebtedness as key issues affecting consumers

​The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today the 8th edition of its Consumer Trends Report for 2022/23, which summarises trends observed for the products and services under the EBA’s consumer protection mandate. The Report has also identified two issues facing consumers in the EU: fraud in retail payments and over-indebtedness and arrears. These issues will shape the EBA’s consumer protection priorities over the next two years.  

​The Report presents quantitative data for the retail banking products which covers mortgage credit, consumer credit, payment accounts, payment services, electronic money and deposits. The Report observes that mortgage credit was affected by rising inflation and the normalisation of interest rates, while credit products were impacted by poor creditworthiness assessments and the rise of new and unregulated credit products. All these issues have been identified as key drivers for consumers’ repayment difficulties and, ultimately, over-indebtedness.  

​Fraud in retail payments, mainly perpetrated by new and different techniques implemented by fraudsters, was the other identified issue as experienced by consumers, based, inter alia, on fraud data collected from the year 2021 when financial institutions in several EU Member States had not complied yet with the requirements sets out in Payment Services Directive (PSD2) and the EBA’s technical standards on strong customer authentication.  

​The Report is based on information provided by the national authorities of the 27 EU Member States, national and EU consumer associations, the members of the ‘Financial Dispute Resolution Network', and EU industry associations, and quantitative data from a variety of different sources. 

​Legal basis and background 

​The Consumer Trends Report 2022/23 has been developed in fulfilment of the EBA’s mandate set out in Article 9(1) of its founding Regulation, which requires the Authority to take a leading role in promoting transparency, simplicity and fairness in the market for consumer financial products or services across the internal market, including by collecting, analysing and reporting on consumer trends.​