- NiCE Actimize's 2025 Fraud Insights Report reveals scams are the predominant choice for fraudsters, accounting for 57% of attempted fraud transactions.
- The report notes a 40% surge in attempted fraud value on international wire transactions, despite a 6% decline in transaction volume.
- Zelle transactions saw a notable increase, with a 26% rise in transaction value and a 34% increase in fraud attempts.
NiCE Actimize, a business under NiCE (NICE, Financial), has released its "2025 NiCE Actimize Fraud Insights Report, U.S. Retail Payments Edition," detailing the evolution of fraud activities across various transaction types. The report leverages data from billions of banking and payments transactions, utilizing NiCE Actimize’s collective intelligence and Federated Learning.
Between 2023 and 2024, scams remained the primary method of attempted fraud transactions, representing 57% of cases. However, account takeover (ATO) fraud remains significant, showing no signs of abating. The report highlights a shift toward scams in 2024, with 52% of transactions compared to an equal split in 2023.
Significant challenges in the U.S. fraud landscape are noted in relation to transaction value versus volume. A substantial development is the 40% increase in attempted fraud value on international wire transactions, despite a 6% decline in the overall transaction value from 2023 to 2024. Meanwhile, Zelle experienced a 26% rise in transaction value, along with a 34% increase in fraud attempts.
Fraudsters are strategically targeting different payment types, with 67% of fraud linked to merely 7% of payments to newly added payees. This exploitation emphasizes the need for enhanced fraud prevention strategies tailored to specific payment channels.
Craig Costigan, CEO of NiCE Actimize, emphasized the importance of industry collaboration in combating fraud, stating, "By sharing knowledge, expertise, and data, we can establish effective controls to safeguard financial institutions and their customers." NiCE Actimize offers solutions such as IFM Advanced Scam Prevention, which harnesses machine learning to detect and prevent scams by analyzing behavioral patterns and sharing intelligence across institutions.
The report also underlines the sophistication of international wire fraud attempts, which increasingly employ social engineering tactics. Financial institutions face rising threats from fraud rings exploiting weak onboarding controls in cross-border systems, highlighting the critical need for robust fraud prevention measures.
