Experts Call for Unified Rules as AI Fuels Human-Focused Fraud

Interpol has warned that financial fraud now targets human vulnerabilities and that AI-enhanced schemes deliver about 4.5 times the profits of traditional methods. The finding has led compliance and risk leaders to press for unified regulation and standardised data sharing across the payments ecosystem. An upcoming webinar hosted in association with Ecommpay will gather those leaders to discuss possible changes.

Fraudsters are focusing on social engineering and psychological manipulation rather than exclusively attacking technical systems. Combining AI tools with targeted persuasion has made many scams harder for consumers and institutions to spot. Organisers of the panel say individual firms’ controls struggle to stop schemes that use automated tools and tailored messaging. Limited information sharing and fragmented internal strategies can leave gaps criminals exploit.

Speakers scheduled for the webinar include Willem Wellinghoff, UK chair and chief compliance officer at Ecommpay; Anne Leslie, head of cloud risk EMEA at IBM; and Teresa Connors, who will moderate the discussion. The panel will review how multiple regulatory and oversight bodies touch fraud prevention and why no single agency holds full responsibility for end-to-end oversight.

Industry participants point to two broad responses under consideration: regulatory reform to provide clearer, more unified oversight; and operational standardisation to allow reliable information exchange. A unified regulatory approach would need to account for the different risks and resource limits of small and large businesses while setting consistent rules for incident reporting, investigations and cross-border cooperation.

Operational standardisation could involve shared data formats, common reporting protocols and independent platforms to pool alerts and intelligence without exposing customer details. Proponents say standard formats and taxonomies would make exchanged data usable across firms and speed coordinated responses.

Panelists will also address obstacles to ecosystem collaboration. Legal conflicts such as data protection rules and sectoral supervision can restrict sharing of transaction and fraud intelligence. Commercial concerns, including competition, potential liability and integration costs, reduce incentives for firms to join collective systems. Technical issues include legacy IT, inconsistent taxonomies and the absence of standard APIs.

Potential regulatory reforms under discussion include clearer guidance on lawful data sharing for fraud prevention, harmonised reporting requirements and mechanisms to limit liability for firms contributing intelligence. The panel will explore whether an independent, non-profit entity could centralise alerts and analytics while maintaining competition and consumer privacy, and what governance would be required.

Panelists will consider trade-offs of standardisation. Shared processes and common data could improve detection and response speed, but standardisation can create single points of failure and requires ongoing updates to keep pace with tactics that use AI. The discussion will consider how standard playbooks can coexist with flexibility for firms to address specific customer bases and threat profiles.

Interpol describes financial fraud as a fast-evolving transnational crime with major economic and human consequences. The webinar aims to map practical steps regulators, banks, payment providers and technology firms can take to improve cooperation and reduce friction in sharing fraud intelligence.