Nearly 80% of organizations fell victim to payment fraud attacks last year, according to the 2025 Payments Fraud and Control Survey from the Association of Financial Professionals. We’re also seeing more fraudulent credit applications and billing fraud. Today, easy access to AI tools is allowing threat actors to produce documentation more convincing than ever and scale attempts at a faster pace.
Examples are everywhere. A Louisiana title company lost $1 million in an apparent scam involving fake invoices. Minnesota health care companies were scammed out of $13 million. A New Hampshire business lost $5.4 million due to fake contractor invoices.
It’s a global problem. Officials in Greece recently uncovered 370 “ghost” companies that used fabricated business information to con millions of dollars from government and business sources. Application fraud, payment fraud, and billing fraud were all part of the equation. And, in today’s global economy, such activity anywhere in the world can suddenly become your problem if you don’t have robust fraud detection systems in place.
Fraud has become serious business for criminals. Fraud detection must be part of your finance operations.
The Expanding Fraud Landscape
Digital transformation has improved efficiency, but it has also widened the attack surface for financial crime. Remote work, online transactions, and automated payment systems have introduced new entry points for different types of attacks, including:
- Application fraud: False identities or manipulated data during onboarding or credit applications.
- Payment fraud: Unauthorized or deceptive transactions executed via compromised accounts or insider activity.
- Billing fraud: Inflated invoices, fictitious vendors, or duplicate payments designed to slip through manual review processes.
These categories often overlap, creating complex patterns that are difficult to detect on their own, and they add up fast. On average, businesses lose about 5% of revenue to fraud every year.
Strengthen Identity Verification and Application Screening
Application fraud is often the entry point for larger financial crimes. We’re seeing an increase in fake documents, stolen business credentials, and synthetic identities where scammers blend real data from real companies with fake information to seem legitimate.
Stopping this requires integrating trusted credit data and background investigations into your due diligence during vendor, customer, or partner onboarding.
Key tactics include:
- Identity matching: Cross-verifying tax IDs, corporate registrations, and ownership data.
- Address and document validation: Ensuring submitted information aligns with verified business records.
- Business credit checks: Using bureau-verified data to confirm the financial legitimacy and creditworthiness of applicants.
Connecting multiple data sources creates a layered authentication process that makes it harder for scammers to pull off their schemes.
Implement Real-Time Payment Fraud Detection
You think it won’t happen to you. That’s what the business who got scammed likely thought, too.
Payment fraud often happens in seconds, making continuous monitoring essential. Real-time transaction oversight across accounts payable, receivable, and funding is essential to help identify red flags before funds move.
Executives should implement systems that automatically flag:
- Duplicate or back-to-back payments
- Transactions exceeding normal thresholds
- Payments to new or unverified accounts
A hybrid approach, combining automation with human oversight, is key. In nearly every application fraud, payment fraud, or billing fraud case, there are warning signs they were overlooked.
Audit and Automate Billing Oversight
Billing fraud is a persistent and often overlooked risks. Yet, executives can mitigate risk by putting three key processes into place:
- Enforce strict vendor onboarding and verification protocols. Confirm ownership, legitimacy, and financial health before establishing payment relationships.
- Automate invoice matching. Implement three-way matching systems (purchase order–invoice–payment) to eliminate manual error and detect duplicates or inflated charges.
- Review high-risk vendors and recurring payments quarterly. Evaluate consistency in invoice patterns, frequency, and payment terms to catch emerging risks.
Leverage Credit and Behavioral Data for Proactive Fraud Detection
Proactive fraud detection is your best strategy, but this requires continuous monitoring of your customers, suppliers, and credit portfolio. Integrating updated business credit data from trusted sources often give you insight into unusual activity. For example:
- Sudden changes in credit behavior or payment performance.
- Mismatched tax IDs or registration information.
- Trade references or vendor details that don’t align with reported histories.
By continuously monitoring vendor and customer profiles, you can identify emerging risks before they escalate. This same data also supports credit risk management.
Building a Resilient Anti-Fraud Culture
Technology alone won’t stop fraud. Fraud prevention requires an across-the-board commitment at every business. The most effective programs? Ongoing, data-driven, and embedded into SOPs. When fraud awareness becomes part of everyone’s daily routine, you can develop the resilience to detect, deter, and respond faster when you suspect potential fraud.
Command Credit offers consumer and business credit reports, background investigations, and ongoing account and portfolio monitoring to help you mitigate credit risk and improve fraud detection. Schedule a free consultation today.