Bureau, a global unified risk decisioning platform, today launched the Global Fraud Intelligence Report 2026: AI, Identity, and the Future of Fraud Defense at the Global Fintech Fest (GFF) 2026.
The report examines fraud dynamics across North America, Europe, the UK, Southeast Asia, APAC and MENA, combining primary data from INTERPOL, FATF, Europol and the FBI with signals observed across Bureau’s global network. According to INTERPOL, global fraud losses reached $442 billion in 2025.
Bureau’s central finding is that AI has fundamentally altered the economics of fraud, making capabilities that once required advanced technical skills increasingly accessible and attacks repeatable across institutions at near-zero marginal cost.
Key Report Findings
● AI Made the Expensive Part of Fraud Cheap: Generative document synthesis, deepfakes and voice cloning have lowered the barriers to creating usable identities. Synthetic-linked account takeover (ATO) events tripled in a single quarter.
● Attacks Are Repeated, Not Invented: Bureau’s network identified nearly 14,000 organised fraud rings in H1 2026, with one in three involving identities that resurfaced in subsequent attacks and the largest network linking over 45,000 identities.
● Real-Time Rails Eliminate Intervention Windows: As FedNow, UPI and Faster Payments scale, the gap between authorization and irreversible settlement has effectively reached zero. ATO risk surged nearly 70% between April and June 2026.
● AI Agents as an Emerging Attack Surface: As autonomous AI agents begin browsing, authenticating and paying on behalf of consumers, institutions will increasingly need to distinguish authorised AI activity from malicious automation.
● Mule Infrastructure Remains the Primary Bottleneck: Approximately 1 in 170 global onboarding applications was flagged as a suspected mule account, with geographic concentration remaining stable over five consecutive quarters.
“Every institution is looking at a fraction of the same attack. An identity that gets declined at one bank is approved at the next within the hour, and neither ever finds out,” said Ranjan R. Reddy, Founder and CEO of Bureau. “That is not a technology gap, it is a visibility gap.”
The report also highlights regulatory shifts and sector-specific exposure across financial services, quick commerce, gig platforms and marketplaces, alongside the growing need for continuous risk assessment beyond onboarding.