There was nearly 21 million euro in card fraud in the first half of 2016 - 78 per cent of which occurred when a card wasn't present.
Gardai are now working with retailers to combat this type of fraud, where a physical card isn't needed during a phone or online transaction.
They're encouraging retailers and customers to tell them as soon as they notice anything suspicious.
Gardai from the Economic Crime Bureau have teamed up with Retail Excellence to clamp down on cases, where stolen details are used either online or over the phone.
Fraud involving card payments online and over the phone amounted to 16.3 million euro in the first half of 2016
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They say there's been a sharp rise in these cases of "card not present" fraud in the past 18 months.
It accounted for 16.3 million euro worth of fraud in the first half of 2016 compared to 21 million for the whole of 2015.
The collaboration is part of a wider Europol Effort - so far this month, Gardai have carried out a number of searches, one person has been arrested and details of 100 cards have been recovered.
Both large and small retailers have been victims, with one major sports store targeted 172 times in March.
Gardaí are urging shoppers to buy from trusted sources, use credit instead of debit cards online and never send a pin by email.
Nicole Gernon reports:
