By Bijan Sanii, CEO and Founder of INETCO
When it comes to fraud prevention, most of us know that small steps can make a big difference: use strong passwords and a password manager, turn on multifactor authentication, and so on. But for banks, fintechs and payment processors, those small steps are just the beginning.
Supported by Fraud-as-a-Service (FaaS) resources and AI-powered bots, cybercriminals are moving faster and more stealthily than ever, and fraud attempts are no longer just phishing emails. Real-time payment scams, account takeovers, and synthetic identity fraud are draining billions from financial institutions. Criminals don’t even need passwords if they can mimic digital behavior, and with AI-driven multi-channel attacks, that’s exactly what they’re doing. Banks are struggling to keep pace, and the cost of falling behind is impacting their ability to outsmart fraudsters, stay compliant, and keep customers safe.
What’s needed is a fundamental shift: fraud prevention solutions must evolve in milliseconds, not hours or days. That means harnessing transaction intelligence, AI and machine learning to spot anomalies instantly, and building proactive systems capable of adapting and intercepting new and evolving attacks before they complete without disrupting legitimate customer activity.
The scale of the challenge is staggering. Globally, digital fraudsters stole over $1 trillion in 2024 — often targeting the most vulnerable populations — with a 71% year-over-year increase in cyberattacks using stolen or compromised credentials. To make matters worse for banks, the cost of fighting fraud typically dwarfs the value of fraud being detected.
Despite spending untold billions on fraud detection, too many banks and payment processors still rely on reactive models that wait until suspicious behavior has been flagged, or until losses have already occurred, before updating systems and rules. That approach no longer works. Fraudsters today are using AI to adapt in real time, often outpacing traditional defenses.
This is not just a technological problem, it is also a trust problem. If banks cannot ensure that every transaction is safe, customers lose confidence — and when confidence falters, inclusion, innovation, and growth all suffer.
The good news is that the shift from reactive to proactive protection is starting to happen en masse. According to the Gartner® Hype Cycle™ for Fraud and Financial Crime Prevention, 2025 report, “while it is a boon in many areas, criminals are, sadly but inevitably, using Generative AI (GenAI) to create evermore convincing deepfakes and phishing attacks. Banks and vendors are fighting back by using GenAI to detect these new kinds of attacks, to explain and score fraud patterns, and to augment their existing systems by making them more accurate, more efficient and more productive.”
As fraud rates climb globally, and as more people enter the financial system for the first time, the responsibility to protect them grows heavier. Every attack that succeeds erodes trust not only in one institution, but across the entire digital economy.
For those of us building fraud prevention solutions, the mission is clear: empower financial institutions to protect every customer every moment of every day. For banks, the challenge is equally clear: recognize that fraud prevention is not an operational cost, but a strategic investment in trust, inclusion, and long-term growth.
Trust is the foundation of financial empowerment. Without it, innovation cannot flourish. With it, we can ensure that every person — whether in Johannesburg, Riyadh, São Paulo, Mexico City or Vancouver — feels safe engaging in the digital economy.
Gartner, Hype Cycle for Fraud and Financial Crime Prevention, 2025, Vatsal Sharma, Pete Redshaw, 21 July 2025
GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally, and HYPE CYCLE is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
Article by INETCO CEO and Founder, Bijan Sanii, originally published in The 2026 State of Fintech by York Public Relations.
