Artificial intelligence is reshaping fraud detection, and many companies are struggling to keep up.

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According to the 2026 Trustpair Fraud Report, 71% of U.S. companies reported an increase in AI-powered fraud attempts over the past year, a sharp reminder that fraud is no longer limited to basic phishing emails or suspicious invoices. Instead, attackers are using AI to impersonate suppliers, copy internal communication styles, generate realistic documents, and launch high-volume attacks across email, phone calls, fake websites, and digital invoices.

What stands out in the data is not just how fast AI fraud is growing, but also how unprepared many organizations are to stop it. Fifty-eight percent of companies say fraudsters are evolving faster than humans can respond, and 47% now rank AI-driven fraud as their top fraud-prevention challenge.

Despite that awareness, many teams still rely on manual processes designed for a very different time before AI existed. Nearly half of companies still use callbacks, email confirmations, or other manual checks to verify vendor information. Those methods can be slow, inconsistent, and easy for AI-powered impersonation to exploit.

“I don’t think there’s a single fraud channel where AI isn’t involved,” said Baptiste Collot, CEO of Trustpair. “Fraudsters use AI across email, web, documents, everywhere, because it makes sophisticated attacks incredibly easy to scale.”

The result is a widening gap between the speed of modern fraud and the pace of traditional controls. AI allows attackers to operate at scale, adapt quickly, and mimic legitimate suppliers with high accuracy. Manual reviews, on the other hand, depend on human judgment, limited context, and time-consuming verification steps that do not scale as easily.

That gap is becoming more dangerous as payment operations move faster. More companies are using instant payments and onboarding new suppliers quickly, often under operational pressure. In those situations, teams may rely on trust and speed to keep business moving, leaving less time to detect subtle fraud signals before funds move.

Without controls that can keep pace with modern fraud, companies risk falling further behind, even as they try to do the right thing. As the Trustpair report concludes, “Manual defenses cannot support the future of corporate payments.”