Credit cards hardest hit<\/p>\n
First-party credit card fraud nearly doubled year over year, rising from 0.08% in Q4 2024 to 0.15% in Q4 2025. Contradictory or mismatched data submitted by applicants became the dominant form of fraud in the category, increasing from 59% of first-party cases to 77% over the same period. Ontario reported the highest regional exposure, with fraud-related credit losses in the sector reaching as much as $123 million.<\/p>\n
A similar pattern emerged in banking and deposits. Third-party fraud attempts in the sector declined from 0.45% to 0.32%, while first-party fraud rose from 0.51% to 0.68%. Cases involving falsified financial information jumped from 1.5% to 21% of first-party cases, while account abuse increased from 14% to 24%.<\/p>\n
Davies said artificial intelligence tools are being deployed to counter the trend. \u201cAI-based technology helps to detect falsified documents and identities,\u201d he said. \u201cAs fraud tactics evolve, Equifax offers reliable AI-powered tools that can help lenders identify both third-party attacks and signs that an applicant may be misrepresenting their financial position.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mortgages, auto loans decline<\/p>\n
Not all categories trended upward. Auto application fraud fell 19.4% year over year, while mortgage fraud declined 12.5%. However, consumers aged 26 to 45 accounted for the largest share of suspected fraudulent mortgage applications, while those aged 35 and under represented the highest share of fraud-related credit losses in auto delinquency balances.<\/p>\n
The Equifax data arrives as Ottawa moves to address fraud at the federal level. In 2025, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre reported that Canadians lost over $704 million to fraud, with total reported losses since 2022 now surpassing $2.4 billion, and experts estimate only 5% to 10% of scams are ever reported.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit cards hardest hit First-party credit card fraud nearly doubled year over year, rising from 0.08% in Q4…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6112,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17,3644,3643],"class_list":["post-6111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-canada","tag-equifax","tag-first-party-fraud"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}