Fraud costs UK small firms £22bn a year
Payments fraud is costing the average UK small business more than £4,500 a year.
Small firms are losing £22bn every year to fraudulent transactions, research by Sage Pay has found.
More than 40pc of the 1,124 UK business owners surveyed by the payment service provider experienced fraudulent activity in the past year, losing an average of £4,515 each.
According to the Federation of Small Businesses, there are 4.9m small-to-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the UK, bringing the total cost of small business fraud to £22bn.