Real-time intelligence sharing reveals millions in attempted bank fraud

Australian banks can breathe a sigh of relief as millions of dollars have been saved in would-be fraud. In a year’s experiment, the initiative has paid off as five of Australia’s biggest banks report the results of joining a real-time financial crime intelligence-sharing network.

BioCatch Trust Network is the name of the game: an inter-bank, behavior-based, financial crime intelligence-sharing network. The network analyzes account holder behavior to detect fraud, and now protects more than 85 percent of the country’s banked population. Tackling financial crime is an industry-and-world-wide problem, one for which experts have recommended behavioral biometrics, machine learning and data science to thwart.

In the third quarter of 2025 alone, BioCatch’s network processed more than 180 million payments worth over $330 billion, and uncovered more than $60 million in attempted fraud. According to BioCatch, in more than 70 percent of transactions the system successfully retrieved the beneficiary’s account profile, allowing it to assess risk before funds were transferred.

“In better than 70 percent of those transactions, BioCatch Trust reliably retrieved the beneficiary’s account profile, assessing the end-to-end payment risk before any money left the sender’s account,” says BioCatch’s Tim Dalgleish, SVP of Emerging Solutions and Network. “When the network makes that match, its signals now detect better than 70 percent of social engineering scam payments.”

The findings were published in BioCatch’s new report, 2025 Digital Banking Fraud Trends in Australia, which observes a 20 percent decline in money laundering activity among its Australian customers. However, the report warned of rising threats. Account takeover attempts have surged 47 percent in the past year, more than doubling in the last six months, driven largely by organized criminal groups.

Emerald Sage, principal intelligence advisor at OSINT Combine, said much of the fraud originates from scam compounds in Southeast Asia, which are integrated with Chinese organized crime syndicates. “Their scale and reach make them a critical threat to global financial integrity,” Sage said.

The report also featured commentary from Toby Evans, head of economic crime at the Australian Payments Network, who argued that the surge in scams highlights a structural gap in modern payment systems. He called for a new principle — Safety by Design — to be embedded alongside Privacy by Design and Security by Design. “By embedding safety into systems from the start, payments can remain innovative, secure, and resilient without forcing consumers to shoulder risk,” Evans said.

Since its launch, BioCatch Trust has expanded to include two more financial institutions, including Macquarie Bank, and has won industry awards from Datos and Regulation Asia for scam prevention and anti-fraud.

In November 2024, when BioCatch announced the launch of the network, BioCatch CEO Gadi Maor pointed out that scam payments are often transferred to mule accounts through which scammers launder their profits before withdrawal.

“To combat this rampant criminal activity, it’s crucial for sending and receiving banks to collaborate and share intelligence in real time to proactively identify these money mules and halt payments to them,” he said at the time.

Article Topics

Australia  |  banking  |  behavioral biometrics  |  BioCatch  |  biometrics  |  financial crime  |  fraud prevention