3 Ways to Prevent Cross-Border Payment Scams in Mexico

Cross-border payments have increased in speed and frequency, and criminal networks collaborate freely to exploit them. While risk is often first encountered at the payment, it originates earlier in the fraud attack chain.

However, fraud detection is obstructed by cross-institutional collaboration barriers, allowing fraudsters to move scam proceeds through mule accounts, across jurisdictions and out of your reach.

The Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA) has released their 2026 State of Scams in Mexico report, outlining the importance of recognizing scams before they impact your customer. Insight into risk at the receiving end of a transaction provides an opportunity to stop the attack chain before funds exit your institution.

Nasdaq Verafin: Shared Perspective on a Growing Challenge

As GASA’s recommendations for Mexico make clear, stronger fraud controls are necessary, but we’re falling behind on scams. According to the report, 83% of adults in Mexico encountered a scam last year, up from 76% last year.

Nasdaq Verafin’s 2026 Global Financial Crime Report corroborates this data, and authorized scams grew by 19.3% to $62B across the globe (two-year compound annual growth rates from 2023 – 2025). In Latin America, scams rose by 11% to almost $2B, and cross-border illicit activity grew to $50B — more than 10% of the global total.

Both reports highlight the need to empower consumers, build a safer payment ecosystem and strengthen cooperation.

Nasdaq Verafin shares GASA’s view that improving collaboration with peer institutions, partners and law enforcement will help identify suspicious cross-border activity sooner. Similarly, we recommend three practices that will improve collaboration and prevent the proceeds of scams from exiting your jurisdiction.

1. Report and share suspicious activity with authorities immediately.

Fraudsters move scam proceeds quickly across multiple institutions, payment rails and regions. The sooner suspicious activity is reported to authorities; the less likely that activity is to show up at other institutions. Detection at the transaction level is important, but we need to catch illicit activity earlier in the attack chain to prevent losses.

Reporting suspicious activity is an important first step toward thwarting a fraudster’s full attack chain, but sharing intelligence quickly across institutions, sectors and borders will ensure tactics don’t surface elsewhere. Criminal networks collaborate and share technology frequently; fraud prevention teams must do the same.

2. Gain transparency into payees, as well as payor behavior.

Evaluating red flags in payor behavior can uncover fraud, but often there are more telling indicators on the payee’s side of a transaction. Fraudsters can easily create new payee relationships, but they cannot easily erase the history of how receiving accounts have behaved across the financial system.

Whether the mule has been created using a synthetic or stolen identity, or if a legitimate customer has been manipulated into acting as one, evaluating recipient risk is often more valuable than analyzing the payment and payor. Analysts with insight into both sides of the transaction are better-able to rule out false positives and keep good payments moving along.

Consortium intelligence helps institutions identify suspicious payees, such as mule accounts, that would otherwise remain obscured, outside of your institution’s view.

3. Increase visibility across major cross-border payment hubs.

Most financial institutions only have visibility into their own customers, and in some cases, counterparties within their own region. However, risk often lies outside an institution’s direct field of view, particularly in regions where payment activity is heavily concentrated.

For example, institutions with access to rich consortium intelligence in the U.S. — the largest payment hub in the world — can mitigate a wide swath of illicit activity. Visibility into payees in major cross-border payment hubs are in a strong position to identify a disproportionate share of suspicious cross-border payment activity and share actionable data with institutions and investigators.

Detecting & Interdicting Cross-Border Payments in Real Time

Cross-border payment fraud is a visibility challenge, and the window we have to act continues to shrink. Traditionally, most cross-border frauds are discovered after the money has been moved and become unrecoverable. That’s why the most effective fraud prevention strategies focus on detecting risk and intervening before funds leave the institution.

However, good customers expect their payments to move quickly and efficiently, leaving little room for investigation. Institutions using advanced real-time analysis, supported by artificial intelligence, can identify risk quickly without obstructing the cash flow of legitimate customers.

Combating these threats requires more than transaction monitoring alone. It requires faster intelligence sharing, deeper visibility into transaction counterparties, real-time interdiction and collaboration across the financial ecosystem.

By combining consortium intelligence, cross-border payment insights and real-time analytics, financial institutions can expand their view beyond individual transactions and identify risks that might otherwise remain hidden.

Nasdaq Verafin supports institutions by providing detailed consortium intelligence, enabling informed decisions and reduced false positive alerts, so you can interdict suspicious payments before funds are lost. Connect with one of our specialists to learn more.