Back in 1939, Henry Wallace, the American Secretary of Agriculture, created the Food Stamp Program. It was designed to supply surplus agricultural commodities to American families in need during the Great Depression. People who received public assistance could get stamps that were then used to purchase food. The program underwent several iterations in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s until finally, in 1984, the first Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) system was introduced.

In our last blog, we looked at 2022’s most prominent global payment fraud trends, including application fraud and synthetic identities, bot-driven DDoS attacks, brute force BIN attacks, and authorized push payment fraud. We also discussed the convergence of cybercrime and payment fraud as cybercriminals constantly look for new ways to exploit payment networks by distracting infosec teams with cyberattacks while they launch fraud attacks.

Payment fraud was at an all-time high ‍in 2022, as hackers and scammers took advantage of increasingly sophisticated techniques to access and exploit payment networks. Let’s look at some of the lessons to be learned from the global payment fraud trends of 2022.

Over the last few years, rapid digital payment adoption and technology development have played an essential role in making international money transfers cheaper, faster, and easier than they were decades ago. The volume of cross-border transactions is now expected to grow to $39.9 trillion by 2026, as these payments are essential in the interconnected economy.

While Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks have been around for over a decade, they still continue to evolve and escalate, particularly during 2022. The tense geopolitical situation caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine has affected the nature and intensity of these types of attacks, making states official participants in the DDoS mitigation market.

In April 2022, a medical billing company based in New York became the victim of a serious ransomware attack. Bad actors stole personal and financial data of patients from 26 healthcare institutions who were the company’s clients. The billing company had to notify almost 1 million individuals that their data had been stolen. Over the last few years, organizations and fintechs that process payments for healthcare providers have become a hot target for cyber attacks.

2023 might be a really important year for real-time payments (RTP) development in North America. FedNow, a real-time payments service, is on track to go operational in 2023 in the USA, while the Real-Time Rail (RTR) payment system will be fully launched in Canada, also in 2023. Currently, in their test phases, these payment systems will go mainstream next year, making faster payments more accessible to smaller financial institutions and businesses.

Back in April, our team attended the ATMIA Canada Conference 2022, which focused on what is next for the industry, current trends in cash use, and ATM security. At one of the sessions, the ATM Security Association (ASA) presented their new Crisis & Crime Management Intelligence System – the industry’s first global-scale ATM crime database and intelligence management system for analysis of crime trends.

A San Francisco-based bank recently disclosed the results of a payment fraud investigation that uncovered ATM skimming attempts at the bank’s terminals across the United States. Fraudsters installed ATM skimming devices in several branches and used them to skim customer account information. The bank was understandably concerned that the stolen data would be used to create fake debit cards and attempt cash withdrawals.