Key takeaways from the Veriff Identity Fraud Report 2025

1. The fraud challenge is increasing

Unfortunately, what we call the net fraud fate - that is, the sum of all types of fraud combined - remains high. According to our data, 5% of all verification attempts were fraudulent in 2024. This number confirms what we discovered in our consumer research carried out as part of our Fraud Index throughout 2024, where almost half of our respondents (47.55%) said that they had experienced some kind of fraudulent online activity over the past 12 months. 

2. Fraud follows the money

Financial services, where there are the richest of pickings for fraudsters, remains one of the industries most likely to be targeted by fraudulent attacks. Authorized fraud - where a user is tricked into performing an identity verification session - is orders of magnitude more prevalent for banks, crypto platforms, payments providers, and other fintech platforms, coming in at more than double the global average.

3. Fraudsters target e-commerce platforms 

There was only one industry with more authorized fraud than financial services: ecommerce. This was the number one industry to suffer at the hands of authorized fraud scams - and by a considerable margin: more than 18 times the global average. The rewards for fraudsters are arguably as great in e-commerce as they are in financial services, with millions of dollars changing hands between merchants and customers every day, and many ecommerce platforms still operating with much lighter fraud defenses.

4. Account takeover and multi-accounting are on the rise

Account takeover, where cybercriminals take ownership of online accounts using stolen passwords and usernames, and multi-accounting, the practice of opening multiple accounts to take advantage of promotions or playing bonuses, both saw a huge surge in 2024. Account takeover cases increased by 13% compared to 2023 and multi-accounting saw a 10% year-on-year increase. 

5. Impersonation attacks still dominate

Impersonation fraud amounted to over 82% of all the fraudulent attempts we saw this year. 

16% of all fraud cases in 2023 involved people presenting altered, counterfeit, and fabricated documents, which was similar to last year. However, there was also a startling rise of adversary-in-the-middle attacks, a type of cyberattack where cybercriminals intercept, relay or alter the communication between two parties without their knowledge, while giving the impression of a direct communication. These types of attacks went up 46% compared to 2023.