As the banking industry continues to combat increasing fraud challenges, payment fraud is growing exponentially. This growth stems from a shifting payment landscape with new and varied payment options. Globally, governments are introducing new initiatives like faster payments and real-time payments which compress turnaround times. These initiatives are altering the fundamental business models of payment instruments like ACH, wire and deposits. While check fraud continues to be a top fraud instrument, global wire fraud losses have been growing rapidly for the past three to four years.

Transnational criminal organizations are taking advantage of technologies that facilitate easier and automatic transfer of messages and funds. Business email compromise (BEC) is the most prominent wire fraud threat, and its use is growing. Email scams using sophisticated techniques such as spoofing, spear-phishing, social engineering, identify theft and malware are deceiving unsuspecting payers’ to transfer funds to fraudulent beneficiaries.

According to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, “the BEC scam continues to grow, evolve, and target businesses of all sizes globally. Since January 2015, there has been a 1,300 percent increase in identified exposed losses, now totaling over $3 billion.”

As a long-recognized leader in fraud analytics software, SAS helps clients proactively identify and combat wire fraud. Machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms ingest financial and non-financial data from multiple sources to identify anomalies in real time, before the payment is approved.

Areas of wire fraud and other payment instruments like SWIFT messages and ACH will continue to grow and evolve. Organizations can confidently use real-time platforms, today and in the future by taking an analytical approach to mitigate risks.

This week is International Fraud Awareness Week, and we've written a series of posts to spread an awareness of fraud and how to combat it. To learn more about fraud, read all the posts for fraud awareness week, or read about SAS solutions for fraud and security intelligence.