From the World Bank to the World Economic Forum to Innovations for Poverty Action, global organisations have highlighted the impact of instant payments and how affordable access to transaction accounts is vital for financial inclusion, especially in emerging markets.
But the speed and scale of this evolution come with risk. As money moves in seconds, so does fraud, particularly Authorised Push Payment (APP) scams, social engineering and money mule networks.
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Regulators have responded, with mandates like the EU’s Instant Payments Regulation (IPR) introducing requirements such as verification of payee (VOP), real-time sanctions screening and faster fraud checks. Yet meeting these requirements isn’t the same as earning consumer trust. Too many institutions are focused on compliance alone, retrofitting legacy systems instead of addressing the real-time risks head-on.
Trust drives adoption. And intelligent fraud prevention is key to earning that trust. Without it, instant payments stall, and so do the broader opportunities. The institutions that win will be those that see fraud controls not as a burden, but as a catalyst for growth.
Fraud prevention: the foundation of trust and the key to adoption
Instant, account-to-account (A2A) payments hold huge promise. Not just as a faster alternative to traditional bank transfers, but as a genuine competitor to card payments. It offers lower fees, faster settlement and a simpler, more direct customer experience. For banks, this creates new revenue streams, helps improve margins and creates fresh opportunities to re-engage customers that have drifted to fintechs and card-led ecosystems.
But fraud remains a critical hurdle. Unlike card payments, which offer built-in consumer protections and well-established dispute mechanisms, instant payments are final. The rise in APP fraud is a prime example: victims are tricked into making authorised payments under false pretences. Once a transaction is made, it can’t be reversed. No chargebacks. No grace period. Just loss. And because liability remains murky, victims often face long and uncertain dispute processes that further erode confidence.
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By GlobalDataThis irreversibility changes the entire risk equation. It demands a much higher bar for fraud detection and protection, because there’s no time for manual review or post-transaction intervention. In a real-time world, trust has to be earned up front. And that means fraud controls can’t be an afterthought. They’re not just a compliance checkbox. They’re a core requirement for customer confidence.
Trust isn’t just a prerequisite for adoption, it is what unlocks scale. Because when users feel protected, they engage more readily. And when businesses feel confident, they invest. Widespread adoption still hinges on user belief that these systems are safe and secure. That belief is not built through messaging, but through experience. By embedding fraud prevention directly into the payment process, institutions can make security feel like a natural part of the flow, rather than a barrier to it.
The opportunity is enormous. But so is the responsibility. We’ve seen this play out in markets like India and Brazil, where trust-enabling infrastructure accelerated payments and expanded access to millions, proving that security and scale go hand in hand. Getting fraud prevention right isn’t just about stopping crime. It’s about enabling trust – and with it, unlocking the true potential of instant payments.
Why real-time protection unlocks real-world value
To unlock the full potential of instant payments, fraud prevention needs to happen at the same speed as the transaction: instantly. Anything slower simply isn’t good enough.
This isn’t just a technical challenge. It’s a user experience issue. Get it wrong, and you create friction. Flag too many legitimate transactions, and customers lose trust. Miss the real threats, and they lose something far more costly – confidence, money and loyalty.
Balancing those two outcomes is where many systems fall short. Legacy controls were built for batch-based environments, not for real-time, high-volume decision-making. Relying solely on rule-based models can result in too many false positives or, worse, missed threats, particularly with how fast attack patterns and individual behaviours evolve.
To fix this, protection needs to be more than fast. It needs to be smart. That means understanding context, not just what’s being paid, but who’s paying, when, why and whether it fits a known pattern. It also means spotting anomalies without blocking activity. And it means doing it all in milliseconds, invisibly, without disrupting the flow of commerce.
This is what unlocks real-world value. Because in instant payments, speed alone isn’t the differentiator. The true advantage is delivering speed and security together, with no trade-offs.
Turning fraud prevention into competitive advantage
What’s needed now is a more integrated, intelligent and adaptive approach to fraud prevention to be able to keep up. One that breaks down silos, analyses risk holistically and operates at the same speed as the payment itself. That means pulling in a wider range of data from various sources such as fraud, AML, sanctions and KYC checks. By aggregating these signals into a unified risk profile, institutions can detect threats faster and more accurately and use advanced analytics to generate more accurate, contextualised insights in real time.
Of course, some organisations are already putting this into action. They’re deploying machine learning models that don’t just detect anomalies but continuously learn to improve their accuracy over time. This explainability matters, as these models are increasingly capable of auto-adjusting thresholds, learning from resolved cases and supporting investigations with clear visualisations and context. They use both structured and unstructured data, like cash flow history, behavioural patterns and device or location anomalies, to build richer, more dynamic risk profiles.
And they’re doing it through APIs that connect internal systems with third-party intelligence in seconds, enabling fast, contextual decisions without interrupting the flow of payments.
The payoff: trust, scale and growth
This level of adaptive intelligence doesn’t just reduce fraud. It reduces false positives. It enriches investigation workflows. And it supports decision-makers with explainable AI that builds confidence, not just in the system, but for compliance and customer reassurance.
That confidence isn’t just strategic, it’s operational. By filtering out irrelevant alerts and providing contextual AI-driven suggestions, banks can reduce investigative overhead and free up fraud teams to focus on real threats. It’s not just about detecting fraud better. It’s about doing it more efficiently and at scale.
And that’s critical. Because the more assured a bank is in its ability to detect and resolve fraud in real time, the more boldly it can expand its instant payment offerings. It can serve new use cases. Reach new customers. And bypass costly card rails that slow growth and eat into margins.
Trust, in the end, is not just a prerequisite for adoption; it’s the driver of it. A fraud strategy that unifies detection, adapts to evolving threats, accelerates resolution and lightens operational load does more than protect transactions. It powers customer confidence, ensures regulatory alignment and unlocks the commercial promise of real-time payments.
Seizing the instant payment opportunity
Instant payments promise more than speed. They unlock greater financial inclusion, economic participation and new commercial models. But realising that promise depends on one thing above all: trust.
Trust is built on the ability to prevent fraud in real time, without adding friction to users. That means moving beyond fragmented, rule-based systems and instead toward intelligent, connected risk detection that spans the wider fraud landscape. This would include KYC checks, payee validation, such as IBAN and name matching, real-time sanctions screening, AML and contextual fraud scoring. All delivered within milliseconds.
By using richer, contextualised data, alongside AI, institutions can detect threats faster, reduce false positives and respond with confidence.
After all, this isn’t just about compliance, it’s about enabling growth. With the right fraud prevention foundations, instant payments become more than a technical upgrade. It becomes a strategic advantage – for customers, for the business and for the future of finance.
Marie-Christine Diaz is Senior Business Strategy Manager at Eastnets
