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Scams continue to get top billing when it comes to favored fraud attempts, closely followed by account takeovers, finds the NiCE Actimize U.S. version of its Fraud Insights Report.
Released Monday, the report found that, of the NiCE Actimize data analyzed, 57% of fraud attempts were scams with account takeovers accounting for 43% in 2024. That’s not much different from 2023, when the figures were 59% and 41%, respectively.
Digging deeper into three payment types included in the report, domestic wire, international wire, and Zelle peer-to-peer payments, data shows that account takeover accounts for 51% and scams for 49% of Zelle fraud attempts. It’s slightly more biased toward scams for domestic wire, 55%, and international wire, 53%. Account takeover comprised 45% of domestic wire and 47% of international wire fraud attempts.
Regarding Zelle, the report found a 34% increase in attempted fraud on the popular P2P payments channel. NiCE Actimize also found that the average fraud attempt dollar value with Zelle, $727 in the 2024 fourth quarter, was up 15.4% from $630 in the 2023 fourth quarter. “Despite this, firms have been able to contain the average fraud attempt per payment to under $0.30,” the report says.
The report also examined check fraud and found the mobile check deposit fraud increased 12% from 2023 to 2024, though, by attempted check fraud value, branch deposits are the majority.
Attempted check fraud amounts peak at branches, too, with the average deposit fraud amount of $13,648, compared with $6,408 at ATMs and $3,240 for the mobile channel.
NiCE Actimize says check fraud at ATMs is interesting because a significant volume of these occur within recently opened accounts, with 23% of them happening within the first 30 days of account opening.
“However, ATM [fraud] reduced from 31% in 2023, as fraudsters have shifted to utilizing more established accounts. In 2023, only 33% of the volume of overall fraud attempts were deposited into established accounts, compared to 42% in 2024,” the report says.
