By PAUL O’DONOGHUE, Senior Correspondent
SOME 90% attempted banking scams now originate from mobile devices, according to the latest Global Scams report from BioCatch.
This was up from 85% the year before. The new data comes from the company’s 2026 Global Scams report, which is sourced from more the firm’s 370 customers across 21 countries.
Jonathan Frost, director of global advisory at BioCatch, said the results of the study show that scammers increasingly rely on customers to move money themselves.
“Scammers don’t need to break into an account if they can persuade the customer to move the money for them,” Frost said.
“That is the challenge banks face today with investment and romance scams, where customers are manipulated into making payments they believe are legitimate.”
The new data comes following multiple other studies which have demonstrated that mobile devices are a key target for scammers.
Meanwhile, regulators such as the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) scammers have warned that scammers specifically exploit phones for bank fraud.
Gadi Mazor, CEO of BioCatch, authors of the report, is a speaker at ‘International Anti-Financial Crime Summit 2026’ in London next week. Also at IAFCS2026 as a speaker is Beth Harris, Head of Financial Crime at the FCA.
UK Finance said last year that £46.7m was lost to unauthorised mobile banking fraud in 2024, the highest value ever recorded.
In 2024, the UK introduced new rules requiring UK payment firms to reimburse most victims of Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud up to £85,000 within five business days.
Fraud reimbursement
Frost said that reimbursement in the UK “protects victims financially after the event”.
However, he added: “It does not stop the scam from succeeding. The priority now has to be preventing the payment from reaching the criminal in the first place.”
Additionally, the survey also found that attempted banking scams surged by 35% over the past 12 months.
While a major rise, it is “substantially” slower than the 65% increase BioCatch reported in 2025.
The company said this suggests that financial institutions utilizing behavioral intelligence are “having greater success at combating scams than banks deploying point-intime, rule-based defenses”.
However, Thomas Peacock, BioCatch’s director of global fraud intelligence, said that scammers have not “suddenly become less prevalent or sophisticated.
“If anything, artificial intelligence has lowered the barrier to entry for aspiring scammers, allowing more bad actors to create more convincing scams at a scale we’ve never seen before,” he said.
“In response, many banks have realised behavioural intelligence enables them to recognise signs of manipulation and coercion before an accountholder ever authorises a transaction.”
BioCatch 2026 Global Scams report findings
The BioCatch report also found that investment scams continue to account for “the bulk of global scam losses”.
“The average investment scam case value reached $6,600 — nearly five times greater than the overall average of all scam types,” the report said.
Other scam types examined in the report included:
- Employment scams – recorded the fastest growth in 2026, with reported victims increasing by 258%.
- Purchase scams – remained the most prevalent type of fraud, accounting for 33% of attempted scams reported by BioCatch customers.
- Romance scam attempts – increased by 23%, well below the 63% rise reported by BioCatch in 2025.
BioCatch included a case study which it said showcases some of the behavioural and device abnormalities that allow banks to intervene before a would-be victim loses any money.
These include:
- The user is seen on an active call
- If the user has remote access applications installed on the device
- How the user adds a new beneficiary
Finally, the report also includes a feature from Erin West, the founder and executive director of Operation Shamrock, a non-profit public-private initiative to fight fraud.
Her investigation focused on scam operations in Nigeria, identifying how fraud can operate at very different levels of scale.
“Sometimes there is a seven-story operation with hundreds of workers. Sometimes there is a 24-year-old sitting in a living room with a phone,” West wrote.
“Both can cause extraordinary harm. And both ultimately need somewhere for the money to land.”
The BioCatch 2026 Global Scams report is available to read in full [HERE].
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