For years, fraud prevention has been treated as a defensive function: a cost center focused on stopping bad actors before they reach checkout. But according to a recent webinar, Fragmented Tools, Fragmented Defences: Building Full-Journey Fraud Intelligence, hosted by fraud futurist and global speaker Tracy Kobeda Brown, and featuring Erika Dietrich, VP of Analytics & Optimization, Payments Intelligence at ACI Worldwide, and independent payments and fintech advisor Matteo Gamba, that framing is quickly becoming outdated.
Drawing on the Merchant Risk Council's latest global survey data, the panel argued that the real problem in fraud prevention today isn't a shortage of tools: it's fragmented, hard-to-use data, and the businesses that fix that will find fraud intelligence has a lot more to offer than loss prevention alone.
Here are the key takeaways from the session.
The problem isn’t a lack of data; it’s unusable data
The MRC's global survey findings set the tone early: the top three fraud management challenges merchants report all come back to data. Using data effectively to manage fraud ranked highest, followed by AI and machine learning capability, which Dietrich pointed out is entirely dependent on the data feeding it, and then simple data availability and access.
Gamba framed why this matters commercially, not just operationally: infrastructure tends to commoditise over time, but proprietary data doesn't. Organisations that get genuinely good at using their own data hold onto that edge longer than any single tool or platform gives them.
Silos are a growth problem, not a planning failure
The panel traced fragmentation back to ordinary business expansion: payment methods, channels, and authentication steps added over time, each sensible on its own but collectively leaving disconnected systems behind. Gamba noted that organisations build for today's needs, not tomorrow's, making a fully unified data foundation hard to plan for in advance. Brown made it concrete with her own experience at American Eagle Outfitters, where separately built e-commerce, distribution, and service systems only revealed their blind spots once chargebacks began outpacing sales growth.
The real fraud fight has moved past checkout
Checkout has absorbed most of the industry's attention for years, since no merchant wants friction that hurts conversion. But as checkout defence improved, fraud migrated toward account takeover, policy abuse, and post-order exploitation, areas that get far less scrutiny. The panel's shared view: real risk visibility now requires signals from the entire customer journey, not just the transaction itself. Dietrich flagged return fraud specifically, including money laundering through returns and merchants unknowingly converting chargebacks into costlier refunds. Gamba added that policy abuse is becoming normalised, with tactics openly shared on social media, and the panel acknowledged that a customer's lifetime value can simply outweigh the cost of tolerating their abuse, making it a business trade-off rather than an oversight.
Compliance and partner data are underused levers
Compliance requirements originally aimed at banks are increasingly cascading to merchants, and data infrastructure projects framed around compliance tend to get funded faster than those pitched purely as fraud prevention. Separately, Gamba made the case for genuine two-way data sharing with PSPs and fraud vendors rather than aggregated summaries alone, since each step in a transaction's lifecycle tends to lose information along the way - and a lack of data is sometimes treated as a risk signal in itself, driving avoidable declines.
AI adoption is outpacing AI autonomy
One statistic anchored this part of the discussion: 68% of organisations say they use advanced AI for fraud prevention, but only 19% operate with full autonomy - a system independently detecting and acting on a signal, like rerouting traffic to another acquirer, without a human in the loop. Gamba's explanation for the caution was blunt: LLM-based systems hallucinate by design, making human oversight necessary rather than optional. Dietrich added that model performance depends less on data volume than on continuous, incremental learning against clearly defined targets.
The takeaway
The organisations that win the next phase of fraud prevention will be the ones treating data as a strategic asset rather than an operational afterthought - breaking down silos, extending visibility past checkout, sharing data genuinely with partners, and repositioning fraud teams around revenue rather than loss prevention. With compliance adding urgency and AI capability advancing quickly, the real constraint isn't technology. It's whether organisations are willing to rethink how they collect, share, and act on the data they already have.
This webinar recap only highlights the key points of the discussion. For the full insights, watch the webinar recording, Fragmented Tools, Fragmented Defences: Building Full-Journey Fraud Intelligence, here.
About Paula Albu
Paula Albu has experience in content writing and editing, as well as being a creative storyteller. As a Junior Editor at The Paypers, she investigates Web3 technologies along with the latest trends and regulations in banking and fintech. Paula is committed to turning complex industry topics into engaging, accessible content that resonates with readers and creates a meaningful connection. She is available via LinkedIn or at paula@thepaypers.com.
About ACI Worldwide
ACI Worldwide, an original innovator in global payments technology, delivers transformative software solutions that power intelligent payments orchestration in real time, so merchants, intermediaries, billers, and banks can drive growth while continuously modernising their payment infrastructures, simply and securely. With 50 years of trusted payments expertise, we combine our global footprint with a local presence, offering enhanced payment experiences to stay ahead of constantly changing payment challenges and opportunities.
