UKRAINE: ECB and FCA warn Europe’s banks to prepare for cyber attacks in retaliation for sanctions on Putin and his inner circle; some lenders conducting ‘war games’

Regulatory Watch News

• 

  Payment fraud increases by 27% to reach €179 million in 2025, Central Bank of Ireland report finds

  Central Bank of Ireland

  September 4, 2026

  Central Bank of Ireland today (Friday 4 September) published its annual Payment Fraud Statistics (PDF 352.39KB), which shows the total value of fraudulent payments reported by Irish resident payment service providers increased by around 27% to over €179 million in 2025. The publication shows in 2025:

  • The total fraudulent payment value stood at €179.04 million (up 27.2 per cent from €140.80 million in 2024)
  • Fraud affects approximately 1 in 10,000 payment transactions.
  • While the number of fraud transactions rose only marginally, there was a significant increase in overall fraudulent payment value.
  • Authorised push payment fraud (also known as ‘manipulation of the payer fraud’) - where fraudsters gain trust by using social engineering to deceive consumers into authorising payments—now accounts for 45 per cent of total fraud by value (€74.86 million), up from its share of 35.2 per cent in 2024. This fraud type is particularly prevalent in credit transfers, representing 67.2 per cent of all credit transfer fraud, up from 45.6 per cent in 2024.
  • The average value of fraudulent payments varies according to the payment methods used. Despite a lower fraud rate, cheques recorded the highest average fraud value at €9,741. Credit transfers recorded the second-highest average fraud value at €2,412 in 2025. Payments made using E-money institutions ranked third with a notable spike from €692 in 2024 to €1,427 in 2025.
  • Cross-border payments (payments sent to accounts located outside of Ireland) dominate payment fraud and accounted for 69.8 per cent of the total fraudulent payment value, amounting to €124.89 million. This marks an increase of 6.3 percentage points from 2024.

• 

  Investigating Professional Money Laundering, Underground Banking, and the Use of Hawala and Other Similar Service Providers

  FATF

  September 4, 2026

  Underground banking, hawala, and other similar service providers (HOSSPs) are long-standing value-transfer and other financial service systems whose operational practices vary by region and level of sophistication. They function as informal, decentralised networks that are distinct from, though sometimes interconnected with, the formal financial sector. While underground banking and HOSSPs may operate outside or alongside the regulated financial system and may serve legitimate remittance and value-transfer needs, they may also be exploited by criminal actors, including professional money launderers, to facilitate illicit financial activity. Against this background, this report examines the roles, methods and typologies of underground banking and HOSSPs in professional money laundering, as well as the capabilities and responses of competent authorities to these phenomena.

• 

  FinCEN Identifies Nearly $13 Billion Linked to Suspected Digital Asset Scams Operated by Overseas Scam Centers

  FinCEN

  September 4, 2026

  WASHINGTON—Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) published an analysis and an alert to financial institutions to be vigilant to digital asset investment scams perpetrated by overseas scam centers. Today’s action is the latest in Treasury’s efforts to protect Americans from fraud. Digital asset investment scams—also known as “pig butchering,” “romance baiting,” or “cryptocurrency confidence schemes”—are sophisticated fraud operations. Criminals use fake personas and social engineering tactics to manipulate victims, who are often American, into transferring funds to fraudulent digital asset investments. These scams are largely perpetrated by transnational criminal organizations based in Southeast Asia, which operate industrial-scale scam compounds and leverage vast networks of criminal actors to facilitate and profit from scams.