Fraud is now a real industry powered by artificial intelligence and accelerated by the immediacy of payments.
Faced with this transformation, the fight against fraud is taking a new turn: that of one AI against another, where technology and responsibility must move forward together.
Fraud is becoming increasingly rapid, targeted and difficult to distinguish. The democratization of generative AI tools and the emergence of autonomous agents allow criminal networks to orchestrate multi-channel, coordinated and adaptive attacks, at a very low marginal cost. A dynamic reinforced by the rise of instant payments, which reduce the possible intervention window to a few seconds.
618 million euros: this is the amount of overall fraud recorded in France in the first half of 2025, according to the Banque de Francean increase of 7% in one year. Fraud has become a structured, agile industry massively equipped with technology and artificial intelligence. At a time when the amounts of fraud continue to increase, understanding this “industrialization” has become a major economic and strategic issue for banks, businesses and regulators.
Modern fraud is a real industry
When we talk about scams and financial fraud, it is important to understand that we are referring to a globalized industry, organized around well-identified value chains. Some actors specialize in acquiring victims via fake merchant sites, or fraudulent campaigns on social networks, others design sophisticated social engineering scenarios, still others provide financial logistics, via mule account networks or conversion platforms.
This same segmentation allows a rapid increase in power for fraudster organizations and, above all, permanent adaptation. When a channel becomes less profitable or more scrutinized, it is replaced. When one message works better than another, it is duplicated on a large scale. This illegal industry innovates, recruits, invests and professionalizes, which today allows fraud to evolve faster than the systems designed to counter it.
Fraud is therefore no more a matter of luck than of opportunism: it is a matter of real industrial logic based on performance, scalability and resilience in the face of controls.
Fraud: the psychological weapon, amplified by AI
Fraud by manipulation represents nearly 40% of the overall amount of fraud cases in France, a rising figure which reflects a profound change: vulnerability is no longer located only in the systems. Fraudsters now exploit complex psychological mechanisms, sometimes built over time, and directly attack consumer confidence: fake bank advisors, romantic scams, investment or delivery scams.
Artificial intelligence allows fraudsters to personalize speeches, adapt the tone and vocabulary to the victim’s profile, produce credible false documents or even use synthetic voices and faces.
Stablecoins, AI, instantaneity: the new battlefield of fraud
Faced with this industrialization, defensive strategies are evolving. The fight against fraud can no longer simply be limited to blocking suspicious transactions after the fact or moderating fraudulent content online. It must be based on a global understanding of the context: identity, behavior, device used, relational history and signals from the ecosystem, including when flows circulate between traditional currencies and digital assets. Siled approaches are gradually showing their limits in the face of attacks that cross channels, banks and sometimes borders.
AI becomes a real basis for decision-making rather than a simple detection engine. It makes it possible to quickly aggregate data, correlate weak signals and help operational teams prioritize their decisions and intervene earlier, before fraud occurs. But the challenge of fighting fraud is not only financial, it also directly concerns customer trust and the credibility of the payment system as a whole.
Transparency of models, explainability of decisions and human supervision are all essential conditions in order to preserve the balance between operational efficiency and respect for customers. Especially since the payment system is becoming more complex and accelerating with the rise of stablecoins and digital currency projects which are introducing new payment rails, which are still heterogeneous in terms of control.
Faced with fraud that is constantly reinventing itself, inaction is no longer an option. The response must be collective, coordinated and resolutely responsible. Collective, because fraudsters know no borders or silos. Responsible, because artificial intelligence, while it is a powerful lever of protection, also engages our duty to set an example.
