New data from more than 370 financial institutions around the world shows attempted banking scams increased by 35% over the last 12 months. The banks reporting this uptick serve a combined more than 760 million users in 21 different countries. All sampled institutions work with BioCatch, which prevents fraud and scams by recognising patterns in user behaviour.
While a 35% increase represents a very significant rate of growth, it is substantially slower than the 65% figure reported in last year’s edition of this report. The findings suggest those banks using behavioural intelligence to detect fraud are making a marked impact in deterring scam attempts against their institutions.
“Social engineering scams have not suddenly become less prevalent or sophisticated,” BioCatch Director of Global Fraud Intelligence Thomas Peacock said. “If anything, Artificial Intelligence has lowered the barrier to entry for aspiring scammers, allowing more bad actors to create more convincing scams at a scale we’ve never seen before. In response, many banks have realised behavioural intelligence enables them to recognise signs of manipulation and coercion before an accountholder ever authorises a transaction.”
“Scammers don’t need to break into an account if they can persuade the customer to move the money for them,” said Jonathan Frost, Director of Global Advisory at BioCatch. “That is the challenge banks face today with investment and romance scams, where customers are manipulated into making payments they believe are legitimate. Reimbursement in the UK protects victims financially after the event, but it does not stop the scam from succeeding. The priority now must be preventing the payment from reaching the criminal in the first place.”
BioCatch’s 2026 Global Scams report also includes a case study that showcases some of the behavioural and device abnormalities – an active phone call during the session, remote access software on the device, how the user adds a new beneficiary and more – that allow banks to intervene before a would-be victim loses any money.
The report also looks beyond individual scam types to the criminal infrastructure behind them. In a feature based on her investigation into scam operations in Nigeria, Erin West, Founder and Executive Director of Operation Shamrock, describes how fraud can operate at very different levels of scale.
“Sometimes there is a seven-story operation with hundreds of workers. Sometimes there is a 24-year-old sitting in a living room with a phone,” said West. “Both can cause extraordinary harm. And both ultimately need somewhere for the money to land.”
While investment scams continue to account for the bulk of global scam losses (with average case values surging to US$6,600), employment scams saw the greatest growth of any scam type in 2026, with the number of reported victims increasing by 258%.
Romance scam attempts meanwhile increased by only 23%, well off the pace of growth BioCatch reported in 2025.
Other key findings:
- Purchase scams remain most prevalent scam type: A full third (33%) of every attempted scam reported by BioCatch customers in the last year was a purchase scam.
- Scammers almost exclusively rely on mobile channels: Nine out of every 10 scam sessions now originate from a mobile device, up by five percentage points from last year. By comparison, traditional unauthorised fraud comes from mobile devices in just 75% of all cases.
- Investment scams far and away most costly: The US$6,600 average case value for attempted investment scams is five times greater than the overall average across all scam types.
