Adyen‘s (AMS: ADYEN) latest research report on fraudulent activities, titled “Fraud’s Identity Crisis,” highlights a significant evolution in payment fraud. While traditional fraud losses on its global platform fell by a fifth or 20% in 2025, this decline masks deeper challenges. The average value of fraudulent disputes dropped nearly 25%, indicating that fraudsters / bad acts are spreading their efforts across more frequent, lower-value transactions rather than focusing solely on potentially larger hits. Fintech fir Adyen explained that this redistribution makes detection harder as abuse scales through automation.
Global ecommerce fraud continues its upward trajectory, projected to surpass $100 billion by 2029, up significantly from $44 billion in 2024.
Automation and AI have democratized fraud tactics, allowing bad actors to script, test, and rapidly deploy methods across networks.
Fake and bot accounts rank as the second most common fraud type, cited by 42% of enterprises surveyed.
A key insight from the research report from Adyen is the rise of first-party fraud, now the most prevalent threat at 44% of reported cases.
This surpasses traditional methods like stolen cards or account takeovers (36%). Fraud has migrated into “trusted environments”—authenticated accounts, verified devices, and recognized customers.
Just 3% of identities drive 50% of refund value, while 5% account for 41% of incidents and 58% of fraud value.
Handling first-party disputes now costs businesses an average of $82 per case, up from $74 the previous year.
High-volume events like flash sales and loyalty programs exacerbate the issue by creating opportunities for policy and promotion abuse (reported by 40% of businesses).
Fraudsters exploit compressed timelines, blurring the line between genuine incentive-seeking and serial abuse.
This shift aligns with broader industry trends. Other research reports document the surge in sophisticated fraud: advanced attempts nearly tripled in some analyses, reaching 28% of cases in 2025.
Synthetic identities—blending real and fabricated data—fuel first-party schemes, while AI-generated documents and deepfakes challenge verification systems.
Traditional identity fraud losses held steady around $27 billion, but victim numbers rose, particularly in new-account fraud.
False declines pose an even greater revenue risk than missed fraud for many merchants.
Half of businesses report increases in legitimate customers being blocked, with static rules rejecting up to 10% of valid transactions.
Manual review costs are climbing for 58% of respondents, and nearly 70% anticipate fraud limiting growth in the coming years—higher in sectors like travel (79%) and digital goods (81%).
Fraud management is increasingly viewed as a growth enabler rather than pure loss prevention.
The emerging frontier is agentic commerce, where AI agents could influence 5-20% of payment volume soon.
These autonomous actors lack human behavioral cues like hesitation, complicating detection. Merchants identify dynamic trust-scoring and AI-platform signals as critical needs.
Other 2025-2026 reports confirm these ongoing pressures. Global payment fraud losses remain elevated, with first-party misuse and refund abuse rising sharply among merchants.
AI-powered attacks and real-time payment vulnerabilities add layers of complexity, while cyber-enabled fraud has nearly tripled over the past decade in financial sectors.
Businesses must now focus on meaningfully moving beyond static defenses to dynamic, behavior-based identification that assesses intent over time. As Adyen experts have explained in the detailed report on fraudulent activities, success ultimately demands balancing digital security with customer experience in an environment of industrialized edge-case abuse.