ATDATA

Q. WHAT ARE THE MOST SIGNIFICANT EMERGING FRAUD THREATS CURRENTLY FACING THE LENDING AND PAYMENTS INDUSTRIES? The lending and payments industries confront a range of rapidly evolving fraud threats that require faster detection and more nuanced signals than legacy systems provide.

Synthetic identity fraud is particularly concerning: fraudsters assemble identities from real and fabricated attributes, then use AI and falsified documents to scale loan and payments abuse. These schemes are hard to detect because they blend genuine data with fabricated elements and can age into trusted profiles over time. Estimated US losses from this threat could reach US $ 23bn annually by 2030.

Account takeover through credential stuffing, phishing and automated bots increasingly targets mobile wallets, P2P apps, crypto platforms and digital banking. Real-time payment

Estimated annual US losses from synthetic identity fraud by 2030

Diarmuid Thoma, Head of Fraud Prevention and Data Strategy, AtData

fraud exploits faster rails and instant settlement, with push-payment scams and business-email-compromise attacks converting authorisation into immediate loss.

Deepfakes and AI-driven synthetic media are amplifying socialengineering attacks and can defeat traditional knowledge- or voice-based checks. We’ re also seeing emerging payment and loyalty abuses exploit weaker controls in loyalty programmes, prepaid and alternative-finance products. Social engineering and elder financial exploitation through AI-enabled scams, fake-investment schemes and romance fraud are increasingly targeting vulnerable populations.

Together, these threats demand continuous monitoring, richer identity signals including email intelligence, adaptive machine learning and crossindustry collaboration to detect, disrupt and remediate fraud before it becomes loss. fintechmagazine. com 143