Report by Sumsub
Identity Fraud Report 2025-2026
Key Findings
The top first-party fraud schemes included synthetic identity (21%), chargeback abuse (16%), and application fraud (14%).
AI-assisted forgery rose from 0% in 2024 to 2% in 2025.
The share of multi-step attacks rose from 10% in 2024 to 28% in 2025, marking a 180% year-over-year growth in 'sophisticated' fraud.
Cambodia recorded the highest ratio of approved applicants linked to fraud networks in APAC at 17%.
The top third-party fraud schemes included identity theft (28%), account takeover (19%), and card testing (17%).
In 2025, 40% of companies and 52% of end users reported being victims of fraud.
In 2025, the sectors most affected by fraud included online media & dating (6.3%), financial services (2.7%), and crypto (2.2%).
The overall identity fraud rate decreased from 2.6% in 2024 to 2.2% over 2024-2025, remaining above the 2.0% level of 2023.
The highest fraud rates were recorded in Iraq (9.7%), Pakistan (5.9%), and Tanzania (5.0%).
1 in 4 respondents in APAC reported being targeted for money-mule recruitment.
Fraud rates dropped in Europe by 14.6% and in North America by 5.5%, while increasing by 9.3% in Africa, 16.4% in APAC, and 19.8% in the Middle East.