Fraud has evolved beyond deception. It now functions like infrastructure, complete with supply chains, service providers, and scalable operations. For large organizations, that shift changes the risk equation. The question is no longer if a fraud attempt will occur, but how many systems and vendors it can pass through before detection.
Finance leaders now face a structural challenge. As payment networks grow, so do the attack surfaces within them. Preventing loss means understanding fraud not as a one-off scam but as a network that behaves like a business.
Fraud behaves like a business
Recent law-enforcement operations show how professionalized fraud has become. In Europol’s impersonation-as-a-service takedown, investigators arrested seven suspects running large-scale identity and spoofing services that enabled thousands of online scams. Europol described the operation as targeting “service providers supporting multiple criminal groups through impersonation kits, fake identities, and digital infrastructure,” showing how industrialized online fraud has become.
In a separate Interpol crackdown, more than 3,500 people were arrested across 70 countries in connection with vendor impersonation and business email compromise networks.
The enterprise challenge: fragmented visibility
For large finance teams, scale magnifies risk. Each region, subsidiary, and system introduces new exposure. Vendor data may live in multiple ERPs, onboarding policies vary by country, and duplicate supplier records are common. The result is a network that even its own owners struggle to map.
Sophisticated actors exploit that. One compromised supplier can be used to infiltrate entire vendor ecosystems. As Eftsure’s CTO David Higgins told the Australian Financial Review, “People may not be aware of the more sophisticated scams that come out today and tomorrow ... that’s where the unfair advantage comes in.”
From single checks to network detection
Traditional fraud controls validate individual transactions. But when criminals coordinate across multiple jurisdictions and vendors, detection must move beyond point-in-time verification.
Eftsure enables enterprise finance teams to see risk as it emerges, not after it happens. Its continuous verification network monitors millions of vendors in real time, confirming that each entity behind a payment is legitimate, not only that account details align.
This network-level visibility helps identify shared accounts, unexpected supplier changes, and unusual payment relationships across subsidiaries. It allows finance leaders to focus on patterns, not just transactions, turning verification into a continuous, connected control.
Partnering with domestic frameworks
Domestic frameworks remain essential in reducing local risk. In the United States, Nacha’s account-validation standards have strengthened domestic verification. In Australia and New Zealand, Confirmation of Payee programs are helping prevent misdirected payments.
These systems form the foundation for safer payments, but their reach stops at national borders. As global supply chains grow, finance leaders need to layer real-time, cross-entity verification on top of domestic frameworks to maintain visibility across the full payment lifecycle.
Turning complexity into control
Complexity does not have to equal exposure. When finance leaders connect verification processes across systems and regions, they convert data into defense. Continuous monitoring reduces manual workloads and improves confidence at approval.
Human oversight remains critical. Applying strong manual controls such as the Call-Back Control Procedure Template for high-risk or high-value payments adds a second layer of assurance when automated systems are bypassed.
Building the next layer of assurance
The next phase of enterprise resilience is systemic trust. Finance leaders who connect verification data across borders and systems can turn complexity into confidence, creating a finance function built for a networked world.
See how real-time, cross-border verification supports enterprise-scale assurance.
