Despite concerns about bad actors using artificial intelligence to perpetrate fraud, there are encouraging signs that AI is helping organizations combat it.
In an FIS survey of business and tech leaders, 78% of respondents said that AI has improved their company’s fraud detection and risk management strategies. Nearly half reported that, as a result, their company plans to increase investment in AI over the next two years.
Perhaps more importantly, more companies are entrusting AI with complex tasks. Roughly 56% of respondents said their organizations are either scaling or fully implementing AI to support financial processes.
According to Firdaus Bhathena, Chief Technology Officer at FIS, this is a sign that organizations are “moving from acknowledging AI’s value to embedding it into the fabric of daily business operations.”
The Agentic Boom
The largest financial services companies have made significant strides in incorporating AI, as evidenced by the recent boom in agentic commerce.
Mastercard and Visa have launched new platforms that turn AI agents into autonomous shopping bots that can search for items and make payments with little customer interaction.
Additionally, PayPal has embedded payments directly into Perplexity’s chat, so that after conversing with an AI agent about a product or service, the user can purchase it directly on the platform.
Removing the Barriers
Amid all these innovations, fraud remains a constant concern. It is a given that bad actors will attempt to manipulate AI agents—especially now, as cybercriminals in many cases possess a greater understanding of the technology.
Criminals have already deployed artificial intelligence, including AI agents, across multiple use cases and on a wider scale, unimpeded by the regulations and obligations that have stifled businesses.
FIS report spotlighted several barriers to broader AI adoption. The top concern among business leaders was the high cost of implementing and maintaining AI-powered systems. The next most frequently cited challenges were a lack of in-house expertise and potential difficulties integrating the technology with existing systems.
Until organizations can move past these obstacles, bad actors will still be one step ahead.
