Pirates have roamed the seas for centuries, seeking to seize money and valuables from anyone crossing their paths. And while pirates of years past largely restricted their thievery to waterways, present day payment pirates (modern criminals) are extending their nefarious activities to cyberspace and other avenues, targeting ACH, card payments, checks and more. What can be done to thwart today’s payment pirate pilferages? Is payment progress underway?
The Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) reported in its 2022 Payments Fraud and Control Report that payment attack occurrences peaked in 2019, when 81% of survey participants said they were targeted by fraudsters. Since then, the number of companies reporting that they were victims of payments fraud attacks has steadily declined, with the number of fraudulent incidents in 2021 dipping to 71%. However, the news isn’t all good for payment progress.
Market and consumer data provider Statista revealed in March 2022 that “payment pirates” are still very active, with e-commerce losses to online payment fraud estimated at $20 billion globally last year. This represents an increase of 14% from the previous year. Payment pirates are actively and innovatively targeting everything from traditional checks and ACH to card payments and cryptocurrencies.
So, while AFP’s 2022 Payments Fraud and Control Report listed checks and then ACH debits as the methods most subject to attempted and actual payments fraud, no payment method is free from attacks. The good news is that various payments and programs such as FedNow are being modernized and introduced to provide better transactional experiences through improved speed, efficiency, convenience, cost and, of course, security, i.e., payment progress.
The AFP 2022 session Payment Pirates and Payment Progress will share expert insights by panelists Mike Timoney from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Richard Love from AP Technology, Steve Murphy from Mercator Advisory Group, with Greg Wilfahrt from AP Technology moderating the session.
Check out the session Payment Pirates and Payment Progress, which provides attendees with professional analysis of the current state of payments and how each method of payment is being modernized to improve performance, prevent theft and mitigate fraud losses.
In this session the payment experts will discuss topics including:
- Must there be a trade-off between payment speed and payment protection?
- Is it advisable for businesses to stick with one payment type, or is it beneficial to use multiple methods?
- What are the vulnerabilities of each payment method to attacks from payment pirates?
- Are real-time payments more susceptible to attacks than their slower counterparts?
- What can you do to better secure your payments?
The AP Technology and Checkrun team is heading to one of the top events for finance professionals – the Association for Financial Professionals – AFP Annual Conference. This year’s event is happening October 23-26 in Philadelphia. You can meet with the AP Technology and Checkrun team at Booth #2008.
