Losses from counterfeit debit and credit cards fell from AU$40.84 million (US$42 million) to $33.46 million in 2011, APCA said. But a closer examination of the figures, provided to APCA by banks and credit card companies, does not present such a clear-cut positive result.

Australia has a complex payment environment. There are debit and credit cards with and without the EMV microchip. Fraud figures submitted to APCA encompass payment cards issued within Australia as well as cards issued overseas and used in the country.

To arrive at the 18 percent decline, APCA combined the cost of counterfeit fraud for domestic Australian "scheme" cards, which bear the brand of companies such as MasterCard and Visa, with those of scheme payment cards issued overseas but used in Australia.

The latter category saw a notable drop in counterfeit fraud, from $28 million in 2010 down to $17 million in 2011. But fraud shot up on Australian-issued cards, from $12.9 million in 2010 to $16.4 million in 2011, the highest figure since APCA began publishing statistics six years ago.

The data suggests Australians using scheme cards in their own country face a higher risk from counterfeiting, even though those cards have the EMV microchip. Further muddying APCA's overall claim is that it doesn't know if the overseas-issued cards have only the magnetic stripe or also contain the EMV chip.