Fraudsters are logging in. Is your fraud strategy logged off?

How can institutions stay ahead when fighting fraud?

Financial crime prevention teams are under pressure like never before and fighting payment fraud has never been more challenging. Attack volumes are rising, tactics are getting smarter, and the window to respond and interdict payments has shrunk to milliseconds. At the same time, customers expect good decisions instantly, and operational costs are getting squeezed all at the same time.

Institutions can stay ahead by rethinking their payment fraud strategy.

Fraud has evolved: they’re not hacking in, they’re logging in

Fraud today isn’t just about stolen cards or brute force. It’s coordinated, creative, and constantly shifting. As discussed in a recent webinar about sophisticated fraud schemes, criminals aren’t picking locks anymore; they’re walking through open doors disguised as legitimate customers. Social engineering, synthetic identities, industrial-scale phishing and insider threats are the new normal. Or it might even be as simple as a weak password. Only recently, a 158-year-old company went out of business and put 700 people out of work due to one employee’s weak login credentials.

Incredibly, despite these threats, many fraud strategies are still built on static rules and siloed systems. These are tools that were designed for yesterday’s threats when everything else is happening at speed; transactions being authorized in milliseconds, customers expecting zero delay and regulators wanting zero excuses.

It’s no wonder financial institutions are starting to rethink the entire approach.

Payment fraud hits more than your bottom line

Payment fraud doesn’t just show up as a line item, it shows up in broken journeys, missed service level agreements (SLAs), lost customers, and compliance pressure. It isn’t an exaggeration to say that one missed alert can ripple outward creating an urgent investigation thanks to an account being frozen too late, losses being reported (with expensive recovery procedures to follow), and the burden of more regulatory reporting.

But overcorrecting has its own cost. Fraud controls that are too aggressive lead to false declines, customer frustration, and a spike in manual reviews that drain a team’s time.

Too much friction and trust breaks. Too little and risk slips through. So how to proceed? The most resilient institutions are solving this by shifting from static rules to adaptive intelligence. As such, they can act faster on real threats, reduce friction for genuine transactions, and stay compliant without creating bottlenecks.

It’s time to rethink payment fraud strategy

The most forward-thinking teams are doing more than layering on new controls. They’re reframing their entire fraud strategy to be:

Intelligent: Moving from fixed rules to machine learning models that adapt in real time.

Proactive: Catching payment fraud before it happens, not after the fact.

Connected: Integrating fraud detection across systems, channels, and teams.

Focused: Prioritizing the right threats, so action is faster.

Traditional fraud tools show you where fraud has been. But that’s no longer enough. To use an analogy, the industry needs to switch from a paper map to GPS with systems that respond to what’s happening now and reroute in real time when threats change direction.

What changes when fraud becomes a strategic priority?

When tackling fraud becomes a strategic priority, there are a host of positive results for the financial institution:

Fraud teams see fewer false positives and have more time for high-risk cases

Payments operations meet SLAs with zero slowdowns in transaction flow

Digital channels protect journeys without friction

Risk leaders gain explainability and alignment with enterprise controls

From reactive to proactive: a smarter way to fight payment fraud

At SymphonyAI, we help global institutions stay ahead of fraud, not just react to it. Our NetReveal Payment Fraud solution integrates behavioral intelligence, explainable AI, real-time analytics, and enterprise-wide visibility to deliver smarter, faster fraud prevention, without adding friction.

By continuously analysing user behaviour, such as mouse movements, typing patterns, and device context, across web and mobile channels, behavioral intelligence enables early detection of threats like account takeover, remote access attacks, and bot activity before a transaction is even submitted. This proactive approach drastically reduces fraud losses while minimizing false positives.

Our machine learning models create adaptive behavioural profiles for each user, making it easier to distinguish between genuine customers and bad actors. That means fewer false alerts, less manual investigation, and a better experience for legitimate users who aren’t unnecessarily challenged or blocked.

The result? Stronger fraud protection, happier customers, and more efficient teams.

Are you ready to rethink fraud?

We’d love to show you what’s possible. Get in touch to learn more about NetReveal Payment Fraud and our full financial crime prevention suite of products including AI agents, AI overlays and the award-winning Sensa Investigation Hub case management system.