The COVID-19 Pandemic has enabled contactless payment volumes to increase quicker than previously projected. According to Juniper research, contactless payments will triple to $6 trillion worldwide by 2024, up from about $2 trillion in 2020, as the amount of mobile wallet transactions increase and banks expand the use of contactless cards.

While major, multi-million dollar man-in-the-middle attacks have remained under the radar in recent months, spear phishing and social engineering attacks are on the rise as fraudsters continue to take advantage of the uncertainty surrounding COVID-19.

When it comes to card-not-present transactions, security is constantly a moving target. Between February and April, the peak period when COVID-19 was spreading across much of the US, cyber-attacks against the financial sector were reported to have risen by 238%. The exponential growth of digital payment transactions, combined with the increasing variety of customer-facing devices and payment applications, has many financial institutions re-evaluating their approaches to cybersecurity.