What is Global payments fraud and how can businesses protect themselves?

Global payments fraud involves an unauthorized individual obtaining funds by compromising payments across international borders. 

In practice, it could look like the Singapore firm who got a message to fund an urgent transfer in March 2025. The request came from a fraudster who strengthened the scam with a deep fake video call, using AI to appear authentic. Without authentication or checks, it led to the release of a $499,000 payment overseas to Hong Kong. 

Learn how to validate critical incoming and outgoing payments and protect your business from payments fraud. 

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Key Takeaways:

• Global payments fraud happens because fraudsters spot the opportunity to exploit a business’ vulnerabilities
• It can occur through card fraud, account takeover, vendor fraud or employee fraud most commonly
• Regulations to digital transactions include PSD2 and the NACHA operating rules
• Businesses can prevent global payments fraud by monitoring their transactions, authenticating payments and automating fraud controls

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How does global payments fraud happen across borders?

The fraud triangle is a psychological concept that states that three factors must be present for fraud to be committed: 

1. Pressure: the initial motivation or reasoning for turning to fraud, such as a job loss
2. Opportunity: the exploitation vulnerability of the victim(s) 
3. Rationalisation: the reasoning or justification process 

Global payment fraud tends to happen due to the second factor: opportunity. Without worldwide standards in place, fraudsters can exploit fragmentation in terms of data systems, regulatory requirements and transaction speeds. Latest trends show that this may be the case no matter the type of fraud, including: malicious card number hacking, invoice fraud and even friendly fraud types like refund fraud and chargebacks. 

Due to the limitations of data sharing and the various ‘standard’ formats, many enterprise businesses are left vulnerable when they operate across more than one jurisdiction. This, unfortunately, is a breeding ground for fraud.  

What are the main types of global payments fraud?

Almost all types of fraudulent activities in payments can happen across borders, but some are more common than others in a business setting: 

Type of fraud	Definition	How does it occur?
Card fraud	Card details are hacked through technology or physically stolen, and scammers spend on these accounts	Fraudsters get hold of business card details and make online transactions where there are no further access controls in place
Account takeover	Software, IT and third-party accounts are compromised by cyberattackers, who can use their new access to steal transaction data or money	Phishing is the typical ‘gateway’ for account takeover, with victims clicking on spam links and inputting their security questions to bypass multi-factor authentication
Vendor fraud	Merchants and supplier systems are compromised, and the attackers use this trusted gateway to attack larger businesses	Cyberattackers impersonate your real vendors and divert payments to their own accounts
Employee fraud	Employees intentionally make payments to their own accounts, or take bribes to assign specific contracts	Employees abuse access controls and poor oversight features to make these payments and cover it during the accounting period

What regulations govern global payments fraud prevention?

The second Payments Services Directive (PSD2) is the most globally-recognized payments fraud prevention regulation. It was introduced back in 2018 and mandated specific minimum operational standards for firms looking to enter the payments market, in issuing countries. 

One such mechanism is Strong Customer Authentication (SCA). This enforces that payment processors must authenticate the customer’s identity as the account owner in two of the following three ways: 

1. Knowledge: like a password or pin number
2. Possession: like a code to a device, phone number or email
3. Inherence: like a fingerprint or facial recognition scan

An updated version of this regulation, PSD3, is currently going through the legislative process to enhance security against emerging threats. It’s expected to be fully implemented alongside the Payments Services Regulation (PSR) by 2027 at the very latest. If you operate in Europe, we recommend that you stay informed on PSR insights to stay ahead of the market curve. 

In the US, NACHA operating rules are set up to automatically reduce the risk of fraud. In 2026, there is a significant update to the rules, including: 

• Standardizing fraud prevention strategies across the payments industry
• Guaranteeing a minimum level of protection for customers and partners
• Promoting risk assessment capabilities by fraud analysts for early red flag detection
• Enforcing more accurate transaction labelling, which should lead to better early warning and detection of suspicious activity

These rules will apply to all businesses that initiate ACH payments, putting pressure on the average US fraud manager to update and better their fraud prevention systems. Otherwise, these companies will risk significant fines, and damage to their service relationships, alongside potential reputational impacts. 

What are the consequences of falling victim to global payments fraud?

Global payments fraud can cause a range of severe consequences, across financial, operational and reputational health: 

• Direct financial losses: this is the most immediate impact, addressing the loss of stolen funds in a work environment. This includes the fraudulent transaction amount (typically high-value) plus extra currency conversion costs which typically add to the losses. Around $15 million was lost by businesses just through CEO impersonation fraud in the first half of 2024.  
• Regulatory fines: due to the confidential nature of compromised data, businesses may face regulatory penalties for non-compliance with their payments and data protection regulations.
• Reputational damage: public fraud incidents can damage customer trust, especially if customers fear their own data is at risk. It can also tarnish the brand’s reputation for years to come, making it difficult to attract new customers and partners. 
• Operational delays: investigations into how the fraud occurred, and the measures needed to overhaul operations to ensure it doesn’t happen again, can severely impact everyday workflows. 

How can businesses prevent global payments fraud effectively?

Key prevention strategies involve implementing real-time and accurate transaction monitoring, strengthening authentication and verification measures, and automating controls with fraud detection tools. 

Real-time accurate transaction monitoring

Move beyond manual checks and slow transaction processing by implementing systems that monitor transactions the exact moment they occur. This will improve your understanding of the customer, understanding their spending patterns and making better product offers. But it can help you clearly determine fraud risks in real-time, minimizing unrecognized transactions and the potential for future disputes. 

Check for: 

• Behavioural anomaly detection: flagging when customers deviate from their typical purchase patterns. For example, a sudden change in shipping address, that could indicate account takeover fraud. Similarly, multiple tiny purchases made in quick succession could indicate card testing, a technique that fraudsters use to validate card details before making a high-value purchase. 
• Data enrichment: businesses can also enrich their data beyond simple transaction monitoring, by adding specific contextual information. For example, geolocation data shows where the transaction was processed. If it’s a far distance from all of the historical purchases made on that account, the transaction could be flagged as high-risk.

Additional information, education and regular training are crucial for your organization to spot these patterns using advanced enrichment technology, maintaining its security. 

Authentication

Employing enhanced account authentication measures should largely eliminate the success of account takeover fraud. Since most businesses aren’t regulated under the full Know Your Customer process, they must do other forms of due diligence: 

1. Multi-factor authentication at checkout: especially in ‘red flag’ moments like a regular customer changing their delivery address
2. 3D Secure: verifying the cardholder’s identity, this shifts the liability for fraud losses from merchants to the financial institutions 
3. Call back procedures: in high-value orders, or when onboarding new vendors, call back procedures are a popular detail verification method – phone calls to an independently verified number

Automating fraud controls

Automated fraud controls must focus on blocking the transaction or stopping the order fulfillment process. They can include: 

• Payment authentication: platforms like Trustpair validate payment account ownership in real-time, blocking outgoing payments where the account details don’t match with verified owner details
• Order hold: medium-risk cases may benefit from a manual review instead of automatically pass onto fraud services, enabling teams to hold transactions until a human has reviewed it
• IP blocking: immediately block transactions originating from known fraudulent IPs or devices

By focusing on real-time screening or purchasing behaviour, and leveraging AI to detect subtle anomalies, businesses can significantly reduce the risk of fraudulent payments. 

Protecting businesses from global payments fraud isn’t easy

Protecting businesses from payment fraud effectively requires real-time monitoring and intervention. Multi-layered approaches reduce financial losses, prevent regulatory fines, and preserve the business’ reputation. You can rely on platforms like Trustpair to protect your business automatically, blocking payments to unverified or suspicious recipients.