Although the annual cost of fraud worldwide is now trillions of dollars, most banks and companies still fail to realize the full extent of its impact on their businesses. Early results from VISA Europe’s new Total Cost of Fraud model, which also includes the costs of prevention, detection, investigation and recovery, for its member banks’ card payment services, show its member banks dramatically under-estimate the cost of payment card fraud at around only 30% of its actual value. VISA’s model has close parallels with company fraud control procedures and is a clear indication that in many companies fraud costs are probably more than twice the amount they are estimated to be. Given that in 2009 companies in the UK reported £2.1 billion worth of fraud, the actual cost could well have been considerably more than £4 billion (not including the losses from shoplifting, which is known to have increased rapidly as a result of the credit crunch).