FLAWED anti-fraud measures taken by banks and credit card companies gave postal thieves rich pickings last year.

Barclaycard, which last year upgraded millions of card-holders to “chip and PIN”, an anti-fraud initiative, yesterday admitted that the cards were sent out “preactivated”, enabling thieves to use them straight away without having to pass any security checks.

The Association for Payment Clearing Services (APACS), which represents the banks on payment issues, reported a 62 per cent rise in card postal fraud to £72.9 million last year. Apacs blamed the roll-out of chip and PIN for the rise, with an average of 100,000 cards being posted every day.

However, Barry Stamp, joint director of Checkmyfile.com, a business that advises people on their credit files, said the fraud could easily be stopped if all banks adopted the policy of card companies such as Marks & Spencer, which puts a block on its “&more” card and requires customers to pass security checks before the card can be used.

Mr Stamp said: “The only way to stop this type of crime is not to send out preactivated cards. But if you are a company like Barclaycard where this will require 9 million telephone calls, the cost is not going to be cheap.”

Sandra Quinn, an Apacs spokeswoman, said: “Whether a card is sent out ready to use or not is a decision for the individual banks. The problem with putting sticky labels (giving activation instructions) on cards is that card-holders do not read them and they end up using ATMs with the stickers still on and this blocks up cash dispensers. We think the rise in mail non-receipt fraud is temporary because of double the usual amount of cards being sent out last year.”

A spokeswoman for Royal Bank of Scotland said that all existing current account customers who received replacement chip and PIN cards would have been sent cards that could be used immediately.

“Once a credit card account is open and running, renewals which include chip and PIN would be preactivated cards,” she said.

High-profile incidents of credit card fraud among Post Office staff brought the problem of this type of crime into the spotlight last year and the banks are working with the Royal Mail to identify fraud “hot spots” to take preventive action, such as asking card-holders to collect cards from a branch in person.

A spokeswoman for HSBC said: “Most of our customers have an existing relationship with us . . . We do not require people to activate their cards. That is not to say that we have not looked at this in the past and we may consider it from time to time.”

However, a spokesman for Lloyds TSB said that all its credit card customers had to telephone the bank and prove their identity before a card could be used.

Apacs said that organised criminal gangs, which infiltrate organisations such as the Post Office and secure delivery companies, were behind the rise in postal fraud.

Apacs set up a Mail Non- Receipt Task Force last year to tackle the problem of fraudsters stealing credit and debit cards in the post.