The U.S. payment system faces dynamic, persistent and rapidly escalating threats as technological developments make it easier than ever to commit fraud involving payments. E-commerce and smartphones have changed how we authenticate users and increased the points of vulnerability, while raising expectations of security and reliability among consumers and businesses alike.
The Federal Reserve is committed to helping educate and build awareness about the fraud landscape, with a focus on reducing fraud risk and advancing the safety and security of the payment system. Learn more about various initiatives below.
Fighting Scams
In 2025, the Federal Reserve released the Scams Mitigation Toolkit to help better identity and fight this type of fraud. Scams involve deception or manipulation intended to achieve financial gain. In 2024, the scams definition and classification industry work group released the ScamClassifierSM model, a voluntary scam classification structure to help the industry categorize different scam types more consistently by using this agreed-upon definition as a basis. A scams information sharing industry work group explored information sharing approaches to help mitigate scam activity and developed a recommendations report that was published in 2024.
Defining, Detecting and Mitigating Synthetic Identity Fraud
The Federal Reserve’s Synthetic Identity Fraud Mitigation Toolkit provides insights and resources to encourage awareness, understanding and broad industry collaboration. A Federal Reserve-convened focus group helped address the problem of multiple definitions of synthetic identity fraud throughout the industry by developing an industry-recommended definition, released in 2021.
An Intuitive Approach to Classifying Fraud
In 2020, the Federal Reserve announced the FraudClassifierSM model. Developed by the Federal Reserve-convened Fraud Definitions Work Group, the model enables organizations to classify fraud in a consistent manner to create a holistic view of fraudulent events and help with more strategic fraud management. Explore the model, including how to register for access to the full model and supporting definitions, as well as additional tools and resources.
Preventing and Detecting Check Fraud
Addressing check fraud is a critical step in safeguarding the U.S. payment system. In 2025, the Federal Reserve released a Check Fraud Mitigation Toolkit to support the payments industry, businesses and consumers in the fight against check fraud.
When Fraud Occurs During Authentication
The Federal Reserve has engaged with the industry through research on key challenges and mitigation efforts related to third-party remote authentication. These efforts offer the opportunity to build awareness and educate industry stakeholders dealing with increasing payments fraud, particularly fraud during authentication.
Understanding and Addressing Secure Payments
Since 2013, the Federal Reserve has collaborated with a wide array of industry stakeholders to advance payments security. From June 2015 through March 2018, the Fed established and led the Secure Payments Task Force as it identified and proposed actions to advance security. Learn more about this journey and other secure payments efforts with industry stakeholders.