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Payment threats are accelerating, but they are not all getting worse in the same way. PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) says payment technology, channels and transaction volumes are changing quickly while criminals continue to target payment environments. Visa’s latest figures point to a shift toward scams and social engineering even as one kind of technical fraud—device-token fraud—declined. For consumers, that means a legitimate-looking payment request can be as important to question as a suspicious website. For merchants and payment providers, it means pairing card-data security with controls for people, vendors and fast-changing payment channels.
What PCI SSC means by threats speeding up
PCI SSC’s first annual report, covering 2025 and published in 2026, describes payments changing at a pace that makes security harder to keep aligned. The Council says tens of thousands of payment transactions take place every second, and criminals continue targeting payment environments. More channels, technology and connections between organizations create more opportunities for both legitimate payments and attacks.
The report is about the pressure on the payments ecosystem, not a claim that every type of payment crime is rising. In a February 2026 analysis, Dark Reading quoted PCI SSC Executive Director Gina Gobeyn warning that complexity can lead to fragmented security: different approaches, uneven adoption and gaps between innovation and protection. That is a concern for consumers as well as organizations: a weak point at a merchant, service provider or technology vendor can affect a payment journey that crosses multiple organizations and borders.
Threats are shifting, not simply replacing one another
The European Payments Council’s 2025 threat update describes a broad range of risks, including social engineering, malware, advanced persistent threats, denial-of-service attacks, botnets, third-party exposure, credential theft, point-of-sale compromise and ransomware. These threats target different parts of a payment, from a person deciding whether to trust a request to the systems that handle payment data.
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Visa’s 2026 threat update illustrates why “safer” and “more dangerous” can both describe the same period. Visa reported that device-token fraud fell 9.6% in July–December 2025 compared with July–December 2024. Over that same six-month period, scams became Visa’s largest consumer-fraud category, with nearly $1 billion in scam-related activity. Those figures are Visa’s reported activity, not a measure of every payment system or all consumer fraud worldwide.
These figures do not show that scams caused the decline in device-token fraud, or that technical attacks have stopped. They show that criminals can pursue different routes: when some direct technical avenues become harder, deceiving a person into authorizing a payment remains an option. Visa says AI is lowering the barrier to fraud, while also being used by defenders to identify attacks earlier. AI changes the scale and polish of deception; it does not make every AI-generated message fraudulent or eliminate the need for basic verification.
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Where attacks can enter a payment
The EPC organizes its threat view around payment instruments and process stages. That helps clarify why a single security measure cannot cover every risk.
| Exposure point | Examples of risk | What to watch |
|---|---|---|
| Human trust | Impersonation, social engineering and urgent payment requests | A message may persuade a customer or employee to initiate or approve a transaction themselves. |
| Payment page or point of sale | Payment-page skimming, malware, credential theft or point-of-sale compromise | Attackers may target the merchant’s payment interface or the systems handling card data. |
| Vendor or service provider | Third-party weaknesses and uneven security practices | A payment depends on connected organizations, so a gap outside the merchant’s own systems can still matter. |
| Network and availability | Botnets, distributed denial-of-service attacks and advanced persistent threats | Attacks can disrupt payment services or persist in systems, rather than only steal data at checkout. |
| Extortion and recovery | Ransomware and criminal monetization | Visa reported global ransomware activity up 26% in July–December 2025; 23% of victims paid ransoms, according to its 2026 update. |
The same risks can affect different payment instruments, including cards, SEPA credit transfers, direct debits, instant transfers and mobile wallets. They can occur at onboarding, when a payment is requested, during initiation and authentication, or during execution. A card-data standard is important for its scope, but it should not be mistaken for a complete defense against every scam involving a bank transfer or wallet.
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Social engineering is effective because the victim may appear to authorize a real transaction. A payment can therefore be technically processed as intended even when the request was deceptive. Slowing down the decision and verifying it through a separate, trusted route can interrupt that tactic.
- Verify unexpected requests to send money or share payment credentials using a phone number or contact method you already trust, not details included in the request.
- Treat urgency, secrecy, threats of account closure and requests to bypass normal approval as reasons to pause and check.
- Do not share one-time passcodes or approve an authentication prompt you did not initiate.
- For a purchase, check that the payment page belongs to the merchant you intended to use. Contact the merchant through its known website or app if a payment instruction changes unexpectedly.
- If you already paid or disclosed credentials, contact your bank or card issuer promptly using its official app or the number on your card, and report the incident to the relevant payment provider.
What merchants and payment providers should prioritize
PCI SSC’s response combines standards updates, guidance, training, qualification and international collaboration. Its January 2026 release says the Council trained more than 7,500 professionals worldwide in 2025 and had 64 organizations on its 2025–2027 Board of Advisors. It also reports work across seven product families. These figures describe the Council’s activity; they do not by themselves prove that an individual organization is secure.
For organizations, PCI DSS compliance is a foundation for protecting payment-card data, not a substitute for fraud prevention and operational resilience. Controls should reflect the channels and payment types the organization actually handles.
- Keep card-data environments governed. Maintain standards compliance and manage payment-page scripts and changes so that unauthorized code or tampering is less likely to go unnoticed.
- Strengthen authentication and approval. Apply appropriate checks to customer and staff actions, especially sensitive changes and unusual payment requests. Do not rely on a password or a single approval step to address impersonation.
- Monitor transactions and systems. Use fraud analytics and security monitoring to identify abnormal behavior, credential misuse, payment-page changes and signs of compromise.
- Manage third parties as part of the payment chain. Understand which providers and technology vendors can affect payment security, clarify responsibilities and keep oversight aligned as services change.
- Train staff and educate customers. Cover impersonation, urgent requests and safe escalation routes, not only technical hygiene. AI can make deceptive messages more convincing, so verification procedures matter.
- Prepare to respond and recover. Define who investigates suspected fraud or compromise, how payment services are contained, and how systems and operations are restored.
No single product or control category addresses every risk. The useful combination is standards compliance, appropriate authentication, payment-page and vendor governance, monitoring, education, and tested response and recovery planning.
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Why coordination matters
Payments connect issuing banks, merchants, service providers and technology vendors. A security gap or uneven implementation at one link can create exposure beyond that organization, while cross-border payment flows make shared expectations more important. PCI SSC’s focus on standards, guidance, training and collaboration responds to that interdependence. The practical test is whether each participant knows its responsibilities and can keep its protections current as the payment channel changes.
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