Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

Scott McClallen – Staff Reporter – The Center Square (The Center Square) – Nationwide, electronic benefits transfer fraud is estimated to cost taxpayers up to $4.7 billion annually, according to the Government Accountability Office. In 2022, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program distributed over $113.7 billion to nearly 22 million households. The federal government entrusts states to reduce fraud in safety net programs. In March, the U.S.

For many financial institutions and retail businesses, there is a need to balance the risks associated with payment fraud and advanced persistent threats against the economic imperative to provide excellent customer experiences in a competitive market. When good users are mistakenly flagged as fraudsters and can’t access payment services, customers get angry and brands lose revenue. These false declines result in lost customers, damaged reputation and lower revenue.

Multinational payment processing firm Nexway has been rapped across the knuckles by the US authorities, who claim that the firm knowingly processed fraudulent credit card payments on behalf of tech support scammers. A Federal Trade Commission (FTC) complaint argues that Nexway and its subsidiaries broke the law by helping scammers cheat money from unsuspecting consumers.

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.