Visa detects nearly $1bn in scam activity

Visa detected nearly $1bn in scam-related payment activity over a six-month period, underscoring how criminals are increasingly using artificial intelligence and social engineering to exploit consumers as traditional payment network security becomes more resilient.

The finding, contained in Visa’s mid-year 2026 Biannual Threats Report released on Monday, covers the period from July to December 2025 and marks a significant shift in the global fraud landscape. According to the payments company, scams have become the largest category of consumer payment fraud, with criminals relying less on hacking payment systems and more on manipulating consumers into authorising legitimate-looking transactions.

The report said the trend reflects a broader evolution in cybercrime, where fraudsters are exploiting human behavior rather than technological vulnerabilities, using impersonation, fabricated urgency, and increasingly sophisticated AI-generated content to deceive victims.

“Payments at a network level continue to get safer, but threats are evolving faster than ever,” Visa’s Chief Risk and Client Services Officer, Paul Fabara, stated.

“Criminals are increasingly targeting people rather than technology, using deception, urgency, and AI-enabled tools to exploit trust. Addressing this shift requires continuous innovation at the network level and close collaboration across banks, merchants, policymakers, and the broader payments ecosystem,” he said.

The report suggests that investments in payment security have made it more difficult for criminals to compromise payment infrastructure directly, prompting them to redirect their efforts toward social engineering schemes that persuade consumers to approve transactions themselves.

Visa said fraud involving device tokens—a security technology that replaces sensitive card details with unique digital identifiers—declined 9.6 per cent during the second half of 2025 compared with the same period a year earlier. The decline, according to the company, indicates that stronger authentication measures and network-level protections are proving effective even as the volume and sophistication of attacks continue to increase.

At the same time, the report identified scams as the fastest-growing source of financial harm to consumers, driven by fraudsters impersonating trusted organisations, creating false emergencies and leveraging AI tools to make fraudulent communications appear increasingly authentic.

Artificial intelligence has become a double-edged sword in the payments ecosystem, the report said. While cybercriminals are using AI to produce more convincing phishing campaigns, voice cloning and other forms of digital deception at scale, financial institutions and payment networks are also deploying AI to identify suspicious activity and interrupt fraudulent transactions earlier in the payment process.

“The rapid adoption of AI has fundamentally lowered the barrier to entry for fraud,” Visa’s Vice President and Cluster Head for West Africa, Andrew Uaboi, noted.

“What once required deep technical skill can now be executed with a prompt. That reality makes intelligence-driven defenses and coordinated action across the ecosystem more critical than ever. With this report, our goal is to help leaders act sooner before fraud reaches consumers.”

Beyond payment scams, the report found that global ransomware activity increased 26 per cent in the second half of 2025 compared with the corresponding period in 2024. However, only 23 per cent of victims paid ransom demands, the lowest proportion recorded to date.

Visa attributed the decline in ransom payments to stronger cyber resilience among organisations, improved recovery capabilities and growing recognition that paying attackers does not necessarily prevent stolen data from being leaked.

The report highlights a changing threat environment for financial institutions, merchants and regulators as digital payments continue to expand globally. Rather than relying solely on strengthening technical infrastructure, the company said combating modern fraud increasingly requires greater consumer awareness, intelligence sharing, and collaboration across the payments ecosystem.

The findings are drawn from intelligence generated across Visa’s global payments network and are intended to help banks, merchants, and policymakers adapt to emerging fraud risks as cybercriminals increasingly target human trust instead of payment technology. (Punch)