Credit card fraud rocketed last year according to UK-wide crime figures which showed that there were 20% more fraudulent transactions year-on-year - up to 2.7 million - and losses increased by one-quarter to £535m.

Credit card fraud rocketed last year according to UK-wide crime figures which showed that there were 20% more fraudulent transactions year-on-year - up to 2.7 million - and losses increased by one-quarter to £535m.

The UK payments association Apacs, whose data was featured in the Home Office's annual crime figures report, said the cost of crimes involving counterfeit cards increased by 46% to £144m.

"The increase is driven by a rise in fraud abroad with UK card details stolen for use in countries yet to upgrade to chip and pin," the report said.

Costs related to fraudulent "card not present" cases - such as using stolen card details over the internet, by phone or mail order - which jumped 37% to more than £290m.

In this category of scam, there were more than two million incidents in 2007 - 58% more than in the previous year.

Although online banking fraud losses decreased by a third from £33.5m in 2006 to £22.6m in 2007 the fraudsters are still having some success in duping customers with phishing e-mails.

Phishing has become far more frequent in recent months with the Apacs data showing more than 10,000 reported phishing incidents in the first quarter of 2008 - up over 200% from the same period last year.

Phishing is the name given to fraudulent e-mails that claim to be from customers' banks but are actually sent by fraudsters urging those with online accounts to give details of their security information.

The e-mails typically link to a fake website identical to the bank's own site and fraudsters then uses the details entered to access online bank accounts.