Payment Fraud Detection and Prevention: What You Need to Know

Updated: June 18, 2026 by Eilean.Roppel@experian.com 4 min read January 19, 2024

At A Glance

Payment fraud detection and prevention combines data, analytics and identity verification to identify, prevent and mitigate fraudulent payment activity across digital channels.

Financial institutions, merchants, and e-commerce platforms are no strangers to fraud, especially in the realm of payments. With the rise of digital currency, fraudsters are becoming more inventive, making it increasingly difficult to detect and prevent payment fraud. In this blog post, we discuss payment fraud and ways to protect your organization and your customers.

What is payment fraud?

Payment fraud occurs when someone uses false or stolen payment information to make a purchase or transaction. The most common types of payment fraud include:

  • Phishing: Through emails or text messages, scammers disguise themselves as trustworthy sources to lure recipients into sharing their personal information, such as account passwords and credit card numbers.
  • Card not present fraud: This type of fraud is one of the most challenging forms of payment fraud to detect and prevent. It occurs when a criminal uses a stolen or compromised credit card to make a purchase online, in-person, or by other means where the card is not physically present at the time of the transaction.
  • Account takeover fraud: This type of fraud occurs when fraudsters gain unauthorized access to an individual’s account and carry out fraudulent transactions. As account takeover attacks continue to increase, organizations are investing in layered fraud prevention strategies that combine identity verification, fraud analytics and behavioral insights to help identify suspicious activity before financial losses occur.

The rise of online payment fraud

Online payments have become a prime destination for fraudsters as more consumers choose to store card details and make purchases digitally. As a result, consumers believe that it’s the responsibility of businesses to protect them online. If there’s a lack of trust and safety, consumers will have no problem switching providers, leading to declines in customer loyalty and monetary losses for organizations.

No matter the type of payment fraud, it can result in devastating consequences for your organization and your customers. According to Experian’s 2025 U.S. Identity & Fraud Report, consumers remain highly concerned about online fraud, with 68% citing identity theft as a top security concern and 61% worried about stolen credit card information. At the same time, nearly 60% of businesses reported higher fraud losses compared to the previous year, highlighting the growing impact of increasingly sophisticated fraud threats. Given these findings, it’s more important than ever for organizations to implement robust payment fraud detection and prevention measures that protect customer trust while reducing risk.

Payment fraud detection and prevention strategies

Approaches to payment fraud detection and prevention have evolved over time. Some of the current and emerging trends include:

  • Additional layers of security: Security measures like two-factor authentication, a Card Verification Value (CVV) code, and a billing zip code can help verify a customer’s identity and make it more difficult for fraudsters to complete a transaction.
  • Enhanced identity verification: By strengthening identity verification during the payment process, organizations can improve fraud detection while creating a more secure experience for both businesses and consumers.
  • Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning: These technologies can analyze large volumes of transaction data, identify anomalies and continuously adapt to evolving fraud tactics, helping organizations make faster and more accurate risk decisions.
  • Behavioral analytics: Behavioral analytics can provide deeper insight into user activity by evaluating patterns such as device usage, navigation habits and transaction behavior. When combined with identity verification and fraud analytics, behavioral signals can help organizations identify potential account takeover attempts and other forms of payment fraud while reducing friction for legitimate customers.
  • Token-based authentication: Tokenization protects card information by replacing sensitive data with a unique identifier (token), which makes data breaches less damaging.

How we can help

As the payments landscape continues to evolve, so do fraudsters. We offer a wide range of payment fraud analytics, account takeover fraud prevention and fraud management solutions that allow you to better detect and prevent payment fraud.

Your organization’s reputation and your customers’ trust shouldn’t be compromised. Click below to learn more.

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