Global banking scams increase by 35%. 90% of all scam attempts now take place on mobile devices.

New data from more than 370 financial institutions around the world shows attempted banking scams increased by 35% over the last 12 months. The banks reporting this uptick serve a combined more than 760 million users in 21 different countries. All sampled institutions work with BioCatch, which prevents fraud and scams by recognizing patterns in user behavior.

“While a 35% increase represents a very significant rate of growth, it is substantially slower than the 65% figure reported in last year’s edition of this report. The findings suggest those banks using behavioral intelligence to detect fraud are making a marked impact in deterring scam attempts against their institutions.” – according to the press release.

“Social engineering scams have not suddenly become less prevalent or sophisticated,” BioCatch Director of Global Fraud Intelligence Thomas Peacock said. “If anything, artificial intelligence has lowered the barrier to entry for aspiring scammers, allowing more bad actors to create more convincing scams at a scale we’ve never seen before. In response, many banks have realized behavioral intelligence enables them to recognize signs of manipulation and coercion before an accountholder ever authorizes a transaction.”

BioCatch’s 2026 Global Scams report also includes a case study that showcases some of the behavioral and device abnormalities — an active phone call during the session, remote access software on the device, how the user adds a new beneficiary, and more — that allow banks to intervene before a would-be victim loses any money.

While investment scams continue to account for the bulk of global scam losses (with average case values surging to $6,600), employment scams saw the greatest growth of any scam type in 2026, with the number of reported victims increasing by 258%.

Romance scam attempts meanwhile increased by only 23%, well off the pace of growth BioCatch reported in 2025.

Other key findings:

• Purchase scams remain most prevalent scam type: A full third (33%) of every attempted scam reported by BioCatch customers in the last year was a purchase scam.
• Scammers almost exclusively rely on mobile channels: Nine out of every 10 scam sessions now originates from a mobile device, up by five percentage points from last year. By comparison, traditional unauthorized fraud comes from mobile devices in just 75% of all cases.
• Investment scams far and away most costly: The $6,600 average case value for attempted investment scams is five times greater than the overall average of all scam types.

Download the report to view the complete results.

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BioCatch prevents fraud and financial crime by recognizing patterns in human behavior, continuously collecting more than 3,000 anonymized data points — keystroke and mouse activity, touch screen behavior, AI agent usage, jailbroken devices, and more — as people interact with their digital banking platforms. With these inputs, BioCatch’s AI and machine-learning models continuously assess both user intent and any signs of coercion or manipulation throughout every millisecond of every digital banking session, allowing banks to distinguish the criminal from the legitimate in real time. Insights drawn from across the entire network of BioCatch institutions further amplify the power and accuracy of that real-time risk-scoring. As of the end of H1 2026, more than 370 financial institutions deploy BioCatch solutions, analyzing 19 billion user sessions per month and protecting more than 760 million users on more than 1.8 billion devices around the world from fraud and financial crime.