From Ransomware to Pig Butchering, Visa Report Shows Top Scams Impacting Consumers and Businesses Globally
20 Mars 2024 - 2:00PM
Business Wire
Visa highlights a more savvy scammer in its Spring 2024 Threats
Report
Today, Visa released the Spring 2024 Edition of its Biannual
Threats Report, which outlines the top payment threats impacting
consumers and businesses around the world. The report points to
increasingly organized, sophisticated threat actors targeting the
most vulnerable point in the payments’ ecosystem: humans.
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“With the use of Generative AI and other emerging technologies,
scams are more convincing than ever, leading to unprecedented
losses for consumers,” said Paul Fabara, Chief Risk and Client
Services Officer, Visa. “Visa is uniquely positioned to address
these threats, with investments in tech and innovation reaching
over $10 billion over the past five years. These investments, in
addition to our ongoing education and top talent, allow us to stay
ahead of scams and protect consumers.”
Individuals as a Primary Target
Consumers are increasingly targeted by scammers, who rely on
heightened emotions to create fraud opportunities. While the number
of individual scam reports from June to December decreased, the
total money lost increased, indicating scammers are targeting
victims with more effective – and costly – scams. According to
another recent Visa survey, more than one-third of adults surveyed
decided not to report scams committed against them1, suggesting the
losses are higher than reported.
Top consumer scams highlighted in the Spring Threats report
include:
- “Pig butchering” scams: Capitalizing on holidays
like Valentine’s Day and New Year’s Eve through social media and
dating sites, scammers lure victims into online relationships and
convince them to invest in fake cryptocurrency trading platforms.
Leveraging AI to create more convincing campaigns, pig butchering
scams have led to billions of dollars of losses for consumers2. Per
Visa’s study, 10 percent of surveyed adults have been targeted in a
pig butchering scam1.
- Inheritance scams: Victims are notified about an
inheritance left by a long-lost relative, often coming from a
seemingly legitimate law firm or other professional entity. Red
flags include secrecy, urgency, requests for personal information,
and the need for an initial payment to secure future gains. 15
percent of U.S. adults surveyed by Visa have been targeted in
inheritance scams1.
- Humanitarian relief scams: Capitalizing on tragic
current events, these scams exploit calls for donations across
social media to defraud unsuspecting donors.
- Triangulation fraud: Threat actors create illegitimate
online storefronts offering in-demand products at a low cost to
collect payment information. Legitimate merchants fulfill the
online order, but payment information is already compromised.
Triangulation scams cost merchants up to $1 billion in a single
month3.
“Visa has a dedicated team that works around the clock globally
to monitor and disrupt the tactics bad actors use to commit fraud,”
said Fabara. “With our average time between identifying and
shutting down an attack measured in minutes versus hours or days,
we are doing all we can to help keep consumers safe. We hope
building awareness of these emerging scams will help consumers
fight fraud as another line of defense in the battle against
fraudsters.”
Increasingly Organized Fraud Operations
In addition to cardholders, threat actors are continually
probing organizations and networks for complex weaknesses,
leveraging new technologies to exploit vulnerabilities with
far-reaching impacts.
Organizational fraud trends impacting the ecosystem include:
- Supply chains and third-party services are increasingly
targeted with campaigns designed to maximize the impact of a single
breach.
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been increasingly adopted by
fraudsters, allowing them to identify vulnerabilities within fraud
controls implemented by banks.
- Purchase Return Authorization (PRA) fraud attacks increased 83
percent over the previous five-month period, with each successful
attack leading to approximately $115,000 in potential fraud losses
to banks.
- Ransomware cases increased 300 percent from June to December
2023 when compared to the same period in 2022. Visa forecasts that
ransomware threat actors will continue to target critical
infrastructure, including financial organizations.
Through the close integration of people and technologies, Visa
has developed processes to mitigate and prevent payments ecosystem
attacks. Visa engages with all payment ecosystem participants to
ensure any at-risk data is identified and impacted stakeholders are
notified.
To read more of the report, visit visa.com/security. To find out
more about the tools Visa uses to help organizations of all sizes
fight fraud, visit the Intelligent Security page.
About Visa
Visa (NYSE: V) is a world leader in digital payments,
facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, financial
institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries
and territories. Our mission is to connect the world through the
most innovative, convenient, reliable and secure payments network,
enabling individuals, businesses and economies to thrive. We
believe that economies that include everyone everywhere, uplift
everyone everywhere and see access as foundational to the future of
money movement. Learn more at Visa.com.
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1
Consumer Scam Report, Visa and
Morning Consult, March 2024
2
US Financial Crimes Enforcement
Network, September 2023
3
FS-ISAC, Holiday Shopping
Threats, 2023
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version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240320282456/en/
Media Contact Meg Omecene momecene@visa.com
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