Fraud trends are rising across all payment types, according to the 2026 Risk Officer Report (PDF). In the last quarter of 2025, Federal Reserve Financial Services (FRFS) surveyed more than 400 risk professionals at financial institutions, who reported increased fraud challenges across the U.S. financial ecosystem.
While fraud and scam patterns differed across payments channels, a clear theme emerged: Financial institutions are seeing more fraud attempts and losses, with criminals increasingly using techniques such as impersonation, social engineering and credential compromise.
Specific findings from the report include:
- Sixty-three percent of financial institutions reported check fraud attempts in the prior 12 months. Further, 32% of respondents noted an increase in counterfeit checks, while others saw jumps in check washing (21%) and payee forgery (18%).
- Counterfeit Check check: 5% Never/NA, 16% declining, 47% persistent, 32% increasing
- Washing: 17% never/NA, 16% declining, 47% persistent, 21% increasing
- Payee Forgery: 11% never/NA, 18% declining, 53% persistent, 18% increasing
- New Account Opening: 26% never/NA, 34% declining, 28% persistent, 12% increasing
- Endorsement forgery: 16% never/NA, 29% declining, 45% persistent, 10% increasing
- Kiting: 24% never/NA, 59% declining, 16% persistent, 1% increasing
- Paperhanging: 59% never/NA, 24% declining, 16% persistent, 1% increasing
- Floating: 35% never/NA, 51% declining, 14% persistent, 1% increasing
- Account takeover fraud is emerging as a trend, with 23% of surveyed financial institutions affected — a 7% increase year over year.
- Authorized party was manipulated: 30%, no change from 2024Authorized party acted fraudulently: 4%, -3% change from 2024Unauthorized party modified payment information: 24%, -1% change from 2024Unauthorized party took over account: 23%, 7% increase from 2024Unauthorized party misused account information: 21%, -1% change from 2024
- Debit card fraud was the most reported type of fraud, with 75% of institutions seeing attempts and 56% experiencing losses from it. Respondents also reported that debit card fraud accounted for 40% of their institutions’ total losses from payments fraud.
- Wire fraud continues to increase and was reported to include account holder scams, business email compromise and money mule-driven funds transfers, indicating the growing sophistication of social engineering-based attacks.
- ACH-related fraud reflected similar dynamics, with increases in account holder scams — seen by 41% of institutions &mdash alongside rising business email compromise, unauthorized debits and account takeover fraud.
More fraud mitigation resources
The Federal Reserve continues to expand its online fraud resources to help educate its financial institution customers and their employees. Explore tools and resources in the new Account Takeover Fraud Mitigation Toolkit. Other resources, which are continually updated, include the Scams and Check Fraud Mitigation Toolkits and the Synthetic Identity Fraud Mitigation Toolkit.
Additionally, FRFS released an on-demand webinar last month about supplemental findings from the previous year’s Risk Officer Survey. The webinar is no-cost and does not require registration. Watch Payments Risk Survey Results: Fraud, Scams and Mule Accounts (Off-site).
