Fraud Defense Moves From the Back Office to the Codebase

The evolution of digital payments has often followed a predictable pattern.

As transactions become faster and more seamless, new layers of infrastructure emerge to support them.

Cloud computing, for example, enabled scalable payment processing, while APIs made payments easier to embed within software, and data analytics improved transaction insights.

Fraud prevention is now undergoing a similar transformation. The March edition of the Business Payments Tracker® Series, a PYMNTS Intelligence collaboration with WEX, revealed that the next phase of payments security is focused on moving defenses upstream by embedding them directly into the transaction lifecycle.

In practice, this means designing payment workflows where identity verification, access controls and authorization checks occur before money ever moves. Instead of treating security as an overlay, organizations integrate risk controls into every layer of the system.

This design philosophy reframes fraud prevention as a product and engineering challenge rather than purely a compliance function.

When Legacy Fraud Defenses Break Down

Payments are disappearing into software. In modern business platforms, transactions now increasingly occur inside the workflows that companies already use. This shift toward embedded payments is redefining how businesses move money, manage operations and deliver customer experiences.

However, the same integration that makes embedded payments attractive also expands the fraud surface. Transactions now flow through APIs, third-party platforms and distributed workflows rather than traditional banking channels.

Instant payment rails and real-time commerce can compress detection windows to seconds or eliminate them. At the same time, risk signals may be fragmented across multiple systems, like identity verification, merchant onboarding, platform permissions and transaction authorization.

Legacy tools struggle in this environment because they focus on isolated transactions rather than the broader operational context in which payments occur. Fraud prevention can no longer be treated as a downstream function. Instead, security must become part of the architecture of the payment itself.

Read the report: Embedding Security: Designing Fraud Risk Out of Business Transactions

Still, embedding security into transactions requires real-time data intelligence.

Modern fraud detection systems increasingly rely on streaming analytics that ingest transaction data as it occurs, evaluate patterns and trigger responses within milliseconds. Such systems analyze multiple attributes, including user behavior, device fingerprints and transaction velocity to identify anomalies before payment approval is finalized.

Companies building platforms with integrated financial services are effectively becoming stewards of payment trust. Their ability to manage fraud risk directly influences customer adoption, regulatory compliance and ecosystem stability.

This is particularly true for marketplaces and software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers that facilitate payments between multiple parties. If fraud occurs frequently, or if legitimate transactions are blocked unnecessarily, the platform may risk losing buyers and sellers.

At the same time, upstream fraud prevention opens the door to new forms of collaboration across the ecosystem. Data sharing, network-level intelligence and cross-platform risk signals can help identify patterns that individual merchants might not detect on their own. As digital commerce continues to expand across industries and geographies, the ability to analyze risk across interconnected platforms will become increasingly important.

Trust, in other words, becomes a feature of the product. As payments continue to disappear into the background of business software, the systems that protect them will need to become equally embedded.

At PYMNTS Intelligence, we work with businesses to uncover insights that fuel intelligent, data-driven discussions on changing customer expectations, a more connected economy and the strategic shifts necessary to achieve outcomes. With rigorous research methodologies and unwavering commitment to objective quality, we offer trusted data to grow your business. As our partner, you’ll have access to our diverse team of PhDs, researchers, data analysts, number crunchers, subject matter veterans and editorial experts.