A total of £503.4 million was stolen by criminals through authorised and unauthorised fraud in the first six months of 2018, new data from UK Finance shows.

During the same period, the finance industry prevented £705.7 million of unauthorised fraud, equivalent to £2 in every £3 of attempted unauthorised fraud.

Newly-collected data, published for the first time, reveals that purchase scams were the most prevalent authorised push payment (APP) scam in the first half of 2018, accounting for almost two thirds of reported APP cases with a total of £19.4 million lost.