Payment Fraud Prevention in Australia: A Complete Guide

Payment fraud is any scheme where a criminal tricks a business into sending money to the wrong account. It includes everything from forged invoices to compromised email accounts to sophisticated deepfake impersonation. The common thread is simple: the business thinks it's making a legitimate payment, but the money ends up with a scammer.

Unlike credit card fraud or identity theft, payment fraud targets the payments your business is already planning to make. You're not being tricked into buying something. You're being tricked into paying the wrong person for something real. That's what makes it so effective, and so hard to detect after the fact.

In Australia, the problem is accelerating. The National Anti-Scam Centre (NASC) reported $2.03 billion in total scam losses for 2024. Payment redirection scams hit $152.6 million, up 66% from the previous year. And those are only the cases that get reported. The real number is likely much higher.

For a detailed breakdown of the latest figures, see our Australian payment fraud statistics page.

Preventing payment fraud comes down to one principle: verify before you pay. The question is how you do it.

Most Australian businesses currently rely on manual verification. Someone in accounts payable calls the supplier on a known number, confirms the bank details, and updates a spreadsheet. This approach works in theory. In practice, it breaks down. Calls don't get made when deadlines are tight. Staff forget to follow the process. New employees don't know the process exists. The phone number they call might be compromised too.

Manual verification also fails to scale. A business making 50 payments a month might manage it. A business making 500 cannot, at least not consistently. The moment your verification process depends on someone remembering to do it, you have a gap. And that gap is exactly what scammers target.

Automated verification removes the human bottleneck. Instead of relying on phone calls and spreadsheets, automated systems check payment details in real time against authoritative sources: banking infrastructure for account ownership, government registries for business legitimacy, and biometric databases for identity confirmation.

The strongest prevention strategies combine multiple layers. Verifying the person is real, the business is legitimate, and the bank account belongs to the right entity. No single check catches everything. But layered together, they close the gaps that fraud depends on.

Technology alone does not prevent fraud. Your people and processes matter just as much. Here are the practices that every business should adopt alongside automated verification.

Train your team regularly. Scam tactics evolve. Your training should too. Every employee who handles payments or supplier details should understand the most common attack types and know how to report suspicious requests. Annual training is not enough. Quarterly refreshers, tied to real-world examples, are more effective.

Establish clear payment change procedures. Any request to change bank details should trigger a verification process. No exceptions. This should be a documented policy, not a suggestion. The process should not rely on the same communication channel as the request. If the change came by email, verify by phone using a known number, not the number in the email.

Separate duties. The person who enters bank details should not be the same person who approves payments. Dual controls make it harder for a single compromised account or a single insider to redirect funds.

Review your vendor master file regularly. Dormant suppliers, duplicate entries, and old bank details create risk. A quarterly review of your vendor records, combined with automated verification, reduces the attack surface.

Plan for when it happens. Despite best efforts, incidents occur. Having an incident response plan that includes immediate bank contact, internal escalation, and regulatory reporting (to ReportCyber and the NASC) means you act fast when minutes matter.