Fraudsters use AI to study compromised email accounts and imitate the timing and language of legitimate payment requests.
Payment fraud costs businesses staff time and remediation expenses while threatening their reputation with customers and vendors.
Bottomline Senior Risk and Fraud Officer Katie Elliott said faster payments require earlier authentication and controls tailored to each business’s risks.
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A familiar email conversation can give a fraudulent payment request all the credibility it needs.
A fraudster inside a business email account can study invoices, approval limits and payment timing, then join an existing conversation with instructions that divert the funds. Artificial intelligence helps criminals do that research in seconds, Bottomline Senior Risk and Fraud Officer Katie Elliott told PYMNTS, giving them the details needed to imitate routine business communications.
For finance teams, the danger extends beyond losing a payment. A compromised email account can damage the relationships that businesses depend on to get paid, purchase supplies and win customers. The apparent familiarity of a request also makes it harder for employees to recognize when those relationships are being exploited.
AI has weakened familiar warning signs such as poor spelling and bad grammar. Elliott said it also accelerates the investigative work criminals undertake after gaining access to an account, helping them locate information that supports a convincing social engineering attempt.
The consequences reach beyond the diverted money. Businesses should count the staff time spent trying to recover funds, investigate the cause, and determine whether staffing, procedures or validation need to change, Elliott said.
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