Capco Survey Flags Consumer Fears Over Deepfakes and Biometric Fraud

A consumer survey from consultancy Capco finds that Americans increasingly prize fraud protection when choosing a payment provider, even as they worry that AI-enabled attacks and deepfakes could defeat the biometric defenses meant to protect them.

In the firm’s US Payment Fraud Survey, security ranked as one of the most important factors when choosing a payment provider for 63 percent of respondents, and 50 percent pointed to advanced fraud protection, both ahead of customer service, transaction speed, brand reputation, and rewards. The strongest concern for identity technology sits in the survey’s findings on how AI is changing fraud: Capco says criminal groups are using AI to combine stolen credentials, create convincing documents, and bypass liveness checks during identity verification.

The survey also found broad unease about impersonation. Eighty-nine percent of respondents said they were concerned that personal information available online could help attackers impersonate them or answer their security questions, a risk Capco says deepfake technology is deepening for voice and facial biometric authentication. The firm noted that passwords, security questions, and some forms of multi-factor authentication are becoming less effective as attackers use AI to improve phishing and automate credential theft.

On identity fraud specifically, Capco reported that the share of newly opened bank credit card accounts linked to synthetic identities, which combine real and fabricated information, more than doubled between mid-2021 and mid-2024, and that auto lenders carried an estimated 2 billion dollars in synthetic identity debt by mid-2024.

“Payment fraud in the US is becoming more organized, automated and sophisticated, with scammers increasing their use of modern technologies and AI-enabled tools,” said Matthew Cohn, partner and US head of banking and payments at Capco, adding that the survey highlighted consumer concerns about key defenses including some forms of biometric authentication.

The findings echo other industry warnings about AI-driven identity attacks, after Sumsub described an AI-driven democratization of fraud, and as Unico network data showed injection attacks coming to dominate classified identity fraud.

Sources: Help Net Security

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By Ali Nassar-Smith