Fraud is becoming increasingly global. While this trend is not new, it is now taking on a whole new dimension. First and foremost, fraud is encouraged by the current economic and geopolitical instability, which is disrupting markets and exacerbating international tensions. " The link between geopolitical instability and cyber risks is becoming increasingly obvious ", point out PWC consultants in their survey of business leaders' priorities for 2025.
Companies and their ecosystems: forgetting about third-party risks
Secondly, companies are becoming increasingly integrated into ecosystems and internationally, with more and more customers, partners and suppliers, without being aware of the risks involved. Research firm Forrester estimates " that only 8% of companies say third-party risk management is one of their top priorities. "
Digital: fraudsters' favorite playground
Finally, digital technology is considerably increasing the risks of identity theft, particularly with the emergence of artificial intelligence. Fraud is becoming increasingly sophisticated and frequent, with deepfake attacks now commonplace and an explosion in the falsification of digital documents. Traditional, easier-to-identify fraud methods such as phishing are gradually giving way to deepfakes and hyper-realistic artificial identities, making detection even more complex. In other words, fraudsters are becoming increasingly creative, and the boundary between the real and the fake is becoming increasingly blurred.
40% of frauds are cross-border
Fraud knows no borders, and that's the problem. According to the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European Banking Authority (EBA), 40% of transfer and direct debit fraud is cross-border. In 2022, fraud in the EU (transfers, direct debits, card payments, cash withdrawals, e-money transactions) cost a whopping 4.3 billion euros. And if nothing changes, this figure could almost double to 7 billion by 2027. Among the most common scams is the Fake Transfer Order (FTO) scam, where cybercriminals impersonate a company by email or telephone to trick them into making a fraudulent transfer.
Dealing with the agility of fraudsters
The latest report from the World Economic Forum warns that fraud is now one of the greatest economic risks. With the expansion of organized crime and illegal activities, fueled by increasingly porous borders and the advent of digital technology, fraud is taking on alarming proportions and is set to explode over the next two years. For its part, OLAF (the European Anti-Fraud Office) points out that fraudsters know no borders or jurisdictions. They can easily move their activities from one country to another, conceal them and relocate them, making detection almost impossible for public authorities.
Highly complex detection
Cross-border fraud is a real headache. Unlike local frauds, they are much harder to spot and combat, largely due to the multiplication of intermediaries. This complexity makes methods opaque and reaction times longer. Add to this the fact that regulations vary from country to country, and there are problems of coordination between all the players involved, and you have an ideal breeding ground for these frauds to flourish. According to a report by the French National Assembly, disparate tax regimes, tax havens and uncooperative states further exacerbate the phenomenon.
For victimized companies, recovering lost money is virtually mission impossible. That's why upstream protection is crucial, and technology a key ally. A third of French CFOs believe that AI would improve fraud detection and enhance the security of financial transactions, according to the 2024 PWC-DFCG barometer.
Proactive monitoring: detecting the undetectable
To counter this scourge, it's essential to invest in solutions like AP Monitoring. By monitoring unusual or atypical operations in real time, these tools can spot the unnoticed.
Solutions must meet several needs:
- Assistance in defining fraud scenarios, so as to target possible cases, based on business perimeters, geography, modes of integration with customers/partners, sectors of activity, fraud operating modes that have already occurred, and processes in place (organization, information system security, degree of user awareness, etc.). These scenarios must be easily customizable and adaptable.
- Reconciling a transaction with customer and supplier databases. In fact, the European Central Bank emphasizes the vital role of Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) in reducing fraud.
- The ability to process large volumes of data and document fraud patterns, to facilitate investigations and understanding of the fraudster's path.
- A hierarchy of alerts, with thresholds, to distinguish between those that are potentially the most costly.
AP Monitoring combines all these features and many more, to detect and reduce fraud attempts in real time.
