AI-Driven Scams Emerge as Leading Payment Fraud Threat, Visa Warns

Visa’s Mid-Year 2026 Threats Report reveals that AI-powered scams have become the fastest-growing source of consumer payment fraud worldwide. From July to December 2025, nearly US$1 billion was lost to scam-related activity, making deception the top fraud category. Cybercriminals are leveraging AI tools and social engineering to impersonate trusted brands, create false urgency, and trick victims into authorising payments themselves. Although network-level compromises have declined, fraudsters are shifting their focus to exploit human trust. The report highlights a 9.6% drop in device-token fraud compared with the previous year, but warns that ransomware incidents rose by 26% over the same period. Improved resilience means only 23% of victims now pay ransoms, the lowest level on record. Visa executives stress that intelligence-driven defence and stronger collaboration across the payments ecosystem are critical to countering rapidly evolving threats.

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