How AI fraud Is evolving faster than AP & procurement defenses

Date:
Tue, 16 Sep 2025 14:01:28 +0000

Description:
How companies can keep up with AI fraud to protect their supply chain.

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For years, spotting a scam was easy. A strange sender address, a spelling mistake, a clumsy turn of phraseit was enough to set off alarm bells.

Unfortunately, those days of easy spotting are over. In 2025, fraudsters are working with tools as advanced as the systems designed to stop them and the practice of good cyber hygiene is becoming a continuous imperative.

AI voice cloning can now replicate an executives tone, cadence, and background noise with uncanny accuracy. Deepfake invoices arrive that dont just mimic a vendors logothey mirror their formatting, payment history, and even metadata.

These attacks arent one-off phishing attempts. Theyre calculated campaigns designed to blend into legitimate workflows until its too late. The numbers behind the threat

The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners reports that organizations lose 5% of annual revenue to fraud, on average. In accounts payable, that can mean seven- or eight-figure losses from a single breach. And the trendline is headed in the wrong directionfraud cases are getting faster, cleaner, and harder to detect.

Weve already seen the cost of falling behind. Last year, a multinational in Hong Kong lost $25 million after employees joined what they thought was a legitimate video call with their CFOonly to find out later the entire meeting was a deepfake. In the U.S., the FTC logged 845,000 imposter scams in 2024, with voice cloning playing an increasing role. Why the old playbook doesnt work

Traditional fraud defenses were built for a world where bad actors made mistakesmisspelled words, mismatched fonts, clumsy requests. AI has erased those tells.

Todays fraud attempts dont just look legitimate because they are legitimate
in structure. They pass basic validation checks, mimic past transactions, and use real supplier data scraped or stolen from previous interactions.

If your AP department is still relying on manual checks or rules-based
systems alone, youre essentially playing chess while your opponent is playing speed chess with an engine running in the background. Fighting fire with fire

The only way to keep up is to match the speed and precision of the attackers, and thats where AI-powered fraud detection is changing the game.

Machine learning models can now flag subtle anomalies in payment behavior
that would slip past a human reviewer, detect duplicate invoices before the payment is processed, even if theyve been altered just enough to fool a rules-based system, and cross-reference vendor bank account changes against trusted databases in real time.

Fortunately, these arent just theoretical capabilities as they can stop fraud in live environments. Imagine, for example, a global manufacturer facing a synthetic invoice ring that infiltrates multiple suppliers systems.

On the surface, every invoice looks legitimatematching past formatting, language, and amounts. But an AI model flags something no human would likely catch: an unusual sequence of routing numbers that doesnt align with historical payment patterns.

That single anomaly becomes the lead that exposes the entire scheme before
any money leaves the business . Building a modern defense

Finance leaders dont have the luxury of waiting for annual process reviews. Threats are evolving all the time. To ensure youre staying one step ahead, heres what should be in your playbook right now: Continuous vendor verification Treat any bank account change as a potential breach until verified through a secondary channel. Deepfake awareness training Your AP and procurement teams need to know these threats exist and how convincing they
can be. AI-powered anomaly detection Use models trained on your payment history, not just generic fraud datasets. Zero-trust payment protocols No single individual should be able to approve and execute large payments
without additional validation steps. Cross-functional collaboration Fraud
isnt just a finance problemIT, legal, and operations should be in the room when response plans are built. The risk in the wait

Fraud today is a technology arms race. The attackers are fast, creative, and unencumbered by rules. But the companies that are winning understand that if you wait until a breach to modernize your defenses, youre already behind.

The most well-prepared leaders I speak with know that fighting fraud in 2025 isnt about closing the door after the factits about locking it, monitoring
it, and making sure you know exactly whos on the other side before it ever opens.

We've featured the best online cybersecurity course.

This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro's Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/pro/how-ai-fraud-is-evolving-faster-than-ap-and-proc urement-defenses


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