The main types of payment fraud
- Card-not-present fraud: stolen card details used online
- Account takeover: a criminal gets into a genuine customer's account
- Authorised push payment fraud: the customer is deceived into sending money
- Identity fraud at onboarding: accounts opened with stolen or synthetic identities
- Friendly fraud: a genuine customer disputes a genuine purchase
- Merchant fraud: a fake or colluding merchant takes payments and disappears
Who bears the loss from payment fraud
In the EU, Article 73 of PSD2 has the payer's provider refund an unauthorised payment immediately, and no later than the end of the following business day. Article 74 lets the payer carry up to EUR 50 of a loss from a lost or stolen payment instrument, and all of it where the payer acted fraudulently or with gross negligence.
For card payments the scheme rules then move the loss between issuer and acquirer through a chargeback. A merchant usually carries the fraud on an online card payment, unless the payment was authenticated with 3-D Secure and liability shifted to the issuer.
How a payment product controls fraud
No single control stops fraud. Products layer identity checks at onboarding, strong customer authentication, device signals, a risk score on each payment, limits, and monitoring after the event.
The rate of fraud is itself measured from outside. Card schemes run monitoring programmes on merchants and acquirers, and EU rules tie exemptions from authentication to a provider's fraud rate.
Where Payment fraud shows up in a platform
Modules that do the work
- Fraud & riskReal-time fraud scoring, limits and case management, with the risk engines you already trust.
- AuthenticationSign-in, passkeys and second factors for customers and staff, on your identity provider or ours.
- KYC / AMLIdentity checks, screening and ongoing monitoring, with the verification provider you choose.
- Card acquiringCard acceptance on the phone, in store and online, through the acquirer you choose.
Platforms that need it
Guides that go deeper
Where it is written
The laws and standards this page's facts come from.
General information, not legal advice: what applies to you depends on your services and your market.