$3.05 billion in reported losses to business email compromise in 2025 (FBI IC3).See the numbers by country →
PayHQ
Fraud statistics

What businesses lose to payment fraud, by country.

Invoice fraud, business email compromise, and push-payment scams — the verified numbers behind them in the United States, the European Union, Australia, Canada, and the United Arab Emirates. Every statistic card links to its primary source.

Last reviewed July 2026 · Sources: government and law-enforcement reports, central banks, industry bodies

$55.5B

cumulative global exposed losses (actual plus attempted) to business email compromise reported to the FBI and financial institutions, across 305,033 incidents in 186 countries

FBI IC3 business email compromise PSA · October 2013 – December 2023

60%

of BEC-affected US organizations saw vendor impersonation — a fraudster posing as a supplier to redirect payment — now ahead of executive impersonation

AFP Payments Fraud and Control Survey, 2025 · Calendar 2024

£576.4M

lost to authorised push payment fraud in the UK — the one market with mandatory reimbursement, where 61% of losses were returned to victims

UK Finance Annual Fraud Report 2026 · Calendar 2025

By country

Pick your market. See the numbers.

FAQ

Invoice fraud, BEC, APP fraud — what they mean.

What is business email compromise (BEC)?

A scam family where a criminal impersonates someone a finance team trusts — most often a supplier or executive — through a compromised or lookalike email account, and redirects a legitimate payment to an account they control. Fake invoices and "we've changed our bank details" requests are its most common forms. The FBI has recorded $55.5 billion in global exposed losses to BEC over a decade.

What is authorised push payment (APP) fraud?

Fraud where the victim is tricked into sending the payment themselves, so it is "authorised" — which is exactly why banks in most countries do not have to refund it. The same crime has different names: APP fraud in the UK, "manipulation of the payer" in EU data, BEC or wire fraud in the US, payment redirection in Australia.

What is invoice fraud or vendor impersonation?

The business-specific version: a fraudster poses as a supplier you already pay, and a genuine-looking invoice arrives with changed bank details. In AFP's US survey, 60% of BEC-affected organizations saw vendor impersonation — now ahead of executive impersonation (49%), with third-party impersonation the most-cited variant (63%).

Can these numbers be compared across countries?

Not directly. Each country counts differently — the FBI counts complaints filed with it, the EBA/ECB collect supervisory data from banks, Australia deduplicates five reporting systems, Canada logs voluntary reports. Every figure on these pages states exactly what its source measures, and each country page explains its own system.

Why do reported numbers understate the real losses?

Because most fraud is never reported to anyone who publishes statistics. The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre estimates only 5–10% of victims report to it; Australia's National Anti-Scam Centre makes the same caveat. Reported-loss figures are floors, not totals.

Methodology

How we verify these numbers.

Every statistic on these pages comes from a named government, law-enforcement, central-bank, or industry-body publication. Each stat card links to its source, and figures quoted in narrative text come from the same verified set. We record exactly what each figure measures, keep the original currency, and review the full set against the newest report editions. Reported losses understate the real problem — most payment fraud is never reported to anyone who publishes numbers.

The numbers are the argument for a second check.

PayHQ checks every supplier invoice against verified records and flags changed bank details before money moves. Live in days.

Book demoSee how it works