"Quite clearly they're spinning the figures the best they can," said Stephen Wilson, CEO of The Lockstep Group, a smartcard and digital identity consultancy based in Sydney. "The press releases are marketing exercises."

The U.S. Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta noted in a that the decline in fraud due to EMV rollout in Australia is "more modest than the decline in counterfeit fraud in other chip-and-PIN markets."

APCA CEO Chris Hamilton admits that the figures issued by his group are not the result of a scientific study. The conclusions are in part speculative based on feedback from sources that supply APCA with statistics. "I think it's a fair statement that it's not very clear," Hamilton said.

APCA maintains the decline in other types of fraud can be attributed to the widespread deployment of chip-capable point-of-sale (POS) devices.

For example, counterfeit fraud dropped significantly on so-called "proprietary" debit cards, which are cards issued by banks that use a payment system run by a company called EFTPOS Payments Australia Limited (EPAL).