A new report from BillingScore shows the U.K. mobile industry is losing up to £140million per year on premium rate fraud. By not tackling this issue, the U.K.’s mobile operators are leaving themselves exposed to a massive risk and it’s consumers and retailers that are paying the ultimate price, the report concluded.

BillingScore says the problem of fraud is set to get worse as mobile purchasing becomes even more prevalent through the rise of in-app payments and near field communications (NFC) payments.

“Premium rate fraudsters in the U.K. are cheating the mobile industry out of more than the biggest ever Euromillions lottery win – every single year! We need to stop this money going into their back pockets, and use it instead to improve mobile networks or lower mobile bills for customers,” said Teresa Cottam, research director, Telesperience.

The £140m per-year cost of fraud affects not only the mobile operators, but all the players in the mobile industry, from SMS wholesalers and aggregators, through to content providers and ultimately retailers and their consumers. One of the reasons that operators take such a significant cut from operator billing (around 30 percent) is to cover fraud and bad debt. Yet the size of the operator cut can make mobile seem like an uncompetitive payment method – reducing the industry’s opportunity to further own the consumer’s wallet.