The introduction of chip and PIN in Spain and France makes using your card in these countries safer than before, the payments association has pointed out.
Some findings from a study by card security specialists CPP are in error, payments association APACS said today.
According to the body, the report is wrong to suggest that the top two overseas debit and credit card theft hotspots for Britons are Spain and France. APACS said that its own figures show that card fraud in France has dropped markedly since it introduced chip and PIN, and has therefore fallen to fourth on the list.
The payments association added that Spain has also seen a £3.9 million fall in fraud since it rolled out its own national chip and PIN system - almost matching France's £4.3 million cut.
"The CPP release focuses on fraud that takes place abroad but the fact is that the majority of this type of fraud occurs when card details are stolen in the UK, and used fraudulently abroad," APACS added in a statement.
Copying the magnetic stripe details of cards in a specially-adapted device, and then using these details to make duplicate cards with the same magnetic stripes to make transactions, is a common method of card fraud. Therefore, chip and PIN, which uses customers' own four-digit bank codes rather than their card stripes, makes these scams harder to pull off.
Accordingly, APACS said that it welcomed the recent introduction of chip and PIN into these two European nations.
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