PayPal milestone

Nearly 35 million people throughout Europe use PayPal to make online payments, the company announced today.

PayPal, the online payment branch of auction website eBay, gave separate figures for Europe and the UK for the first time, having previously only separated its results into US and rest of the world.

The figures show that in the UK, PayPal has 15 million users, the equivalent of a third of the UK’s adult population, and half of the Uk’s online population.

PayPal’s growth comes as increasing numbers of UK consumers go online to do their shopping.

As online purchases and online payments increase, so has the risk of credit card fraud said the Association for Payment Clearing Services (Apacs).

Online losses to fraud increased by 44 per cent from £23.2m in 2005 to £33.5m in 2006 according to Apacs.

The biggest reason for the increase is down to the use of phishing, whereby cyber criminals set up fake websites or make fake official-looking requests for consumers’ details.

Simon Bennett, spokesperson for Apacs, said: "The fraud figures we have seen for online banking is due to the increase in phishing online. The number of phishing incidents has increased to a massive 14,000 last year compared to 1,700 the year before."

PayPal asks consumers to remember it will never ask a user for his or her login or credit card details in an email.