In recent years, the Federal Reserve has focused on advancing U.S. payment security by engaging and educating stakeholders on key fraud trends, researching the changing fraud landscape, and helping catalyze the industry to address common fraud challenges — including through convening industry work groups and launching three online fraud mitigation toolkits.
People look to their financial institutions for information and guidance to help to protect themselves and their financial information from ever-growing payments fraud threats. For example, U.S. losses due to fraud and scams were $138 billion in 2023, according to Nasdaq Verafin’s 2024 Global Financial Crime Report (Off-site). Major pain points for the industry include check fraud, scams, account takeovers (when unauthorized individuals gain access to and take control of a user’s account), and synthetic identity fraud (made possible when criminals fabricate a person or entity to commit a dishonest act for personal or financial gain).
Now, you can hear more about the current fraud landscape, the Fed’s payment security initiatives and tools in an on-demand webinar, The Evolving Fraud Landscape: Trends, Challenges and Tools (Off-site).
Our FedPayments Improvement experts will discuss:
- The Fed’s role in payment security and payment system improvement (0:42)
- Current fraud trends (2:08)
- Federal Reserve Financial Services’ fraud resources overview, including its synthetic identity fraud mitigation toolkit introduced in 2022 (20:58)
- New check fraud mitigation toolkit (21:38)
- New scams mitigation toolkit (24:00)
- FraudClassifierSM model (26:11)
- ScamClassifierSM model (26:11)
- How to stay engaged with the Federal Reserve on fraud and other payments topics (27:13)
Visit the new Toolkits
The Check Fraud Mitigation Toolkit and Scams Mitigation Toolkit are intended to support education and increase awareness about check fraud and scams, enable the payments industry to better identify and fight them, and foster industry collaboration on fraud and scams mitigation. These online repositories of insights and downloadable resources are valuable resources for financial institutions, businesses and consumers to help detect and mitigate scams and fraud.
The initial toolkit releases focus on building foundational knowledge about different types of scams and check fraud, the tactics and human vulnerabilities that often enable these schemes to succeed, and common scenarios that financial institutions, service providers, other businesses and individuals may encounter. In the fourth quarter of 2025, second releases of these toolkits will offer additional insights and resources. Watch for more information and learning opportunities from the Fed as we continue to collaborate with the payments industry to address the growing threat of fraud.
Reminder: Federal Bank Regulatory Agencies Seek Comment to Address Payment and Check Fraud
In June 2025, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) requested input on potential actions to help mitigate risk of payments and check fraud (Off-site). Comments must be received by Sept. 18, 2025, 90 days after the request for comment notice was published in the Federal Register.
Stay Connected
Stay informed about the Fed’s efforts to support payment security and mitigate fraud by joining the FedPayments Improvement Community.
These toolkits were developed by the Federal Reserve to help educate the industry about scams and check fraud. Insights for these toolkits were provided through interviews with industry experts, publicly available research and team member expertise. The toolkits are not intended to result in any regulatory or reporting requirements, imply any liabilities for fraud loss, or confer any legal status, legal definitions, or legal rights or responsibilities. While use of these toolkits throughout the industry is encouraged, their utilization is voluntary at the discretion of each individual entity. Absent written consent, the toolkits may not be used in a manner that suggests the Federal Reserve endorses a third-party product or service.