Fraudsters have begun to actively steal money from owners of Android smartphones via NFC, a contactless payment technology. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in the second half of 2025, this scheme accounted for about half of all remote thefts using malicious programs.
The scenario is built around the familiar legend of a "safe account." A person receives a call, is frightened by the threat of money being debited, and is persuaded to withdraw cash. After that, they are asked to install an application, supposedly a banking app, but in reality, it is a Trojan.
Then the key moment begins. The user thinks they are linking their card to NFC, but in reality, the application connects the fraudsters' card.
Then the victim is sent to an ATM and asked to deposit money via their phone. As a result, the funds are credited not to a "protected account," but directly to the attackers.
This scheme is called "reverse NFC." Unlike older methods where fraudsters tried to steal card data, here the person transfers the money themselves, so the operations are more difficult to track and stop.
The scale is already noticeable: in just ten months of 2025, at least 1.6 billion rubles were stolen through such schemes. At the same time, the number of attacks continues to grow, by about 10–20% per year.
Banks are trying to combat this through anti-fraud systems, and the authorities are discussing the introduction of limits on transactions via NFC, for example, up to 50 thousand rubles at a time. But experts believe that this will only partially reduce the risks.
The main protection remains the same: do not install applications from other people's links, do not change phone settings at the request of "bank employees," and do not perform financial transactions under pressure.
If the conversation comes down to an urgent transfer or a trip to an ATM, it's almost always fraudsters.