Majority of scams originate on social media and messaging apps

JAKARTA, Indonesia (Nov. 11, 2026) — A new survey of 100 fraud-management, anti-money laundering (AML), and compliance team leaders at banks in Indonesia finds more respondents rank social engineering scams as their single biggest concern than any other fraud type. At the same time, Indonesian banking leaders report some of the lowest loss totals of any country surveyed, with just 34% estimating their institution’s annual fraud losses in excess of $10 million.

“Indonesian banks express considerable faith in their fraud defenses,” BioCatch Director of Global Fraud Intelligence Thomas Peacock said, “but the findings raise questions about whether those defenses are keeping pace with the threats they face. More than four in five respondents consider their existing controls effective, even as social engineering dominates their concerns and identifying manipulated customers remains their biggest operational challenge. Banks cannot afford to mistake the effectiveness of their existing controls for readiness against emerging threats. Fraudsters continually change their methods, and banks must evolve just as quickly.”

BioCatch, which prevents fraud and financial crime by recognizing patterns in human behavior, commissioned this and 11 other surveys of a combined 1,200 banking leaders across 12 geographies. All respondents are manager level or above and work in their bank’s fraud or financial crime department.

More than two in five Indonesian respondents report increasing fraud attempts (43%) at their organization, while a similar 42% report increasing fraud losses. Half of those surveyed point to coached user journeys among their bank’s biggest fraud-detection gaps, with 19% ranking it as their single greatest weakness.

“Indonesia's QRIS and BI-FAST payment systems have transformed how quickly money moves, leaving banks with less time to recognize suspicious activity before funds disappear,” BioCatch Global Advisory Director Subhashish Bose said. “As instant payments become an increasingly central part of everyday life, fraud prevention must operate at the same speed as the transactions it protects. That requires recognizing the behavioral signs of manipulation as they emerge, even when the customer and the transaction appear entirely legitimate.”

Other key findings:

• Fraud defenses are getting an upgrade: More than half (55%) of respondents say their organization is actively evaluating vendors or already procuring or implementing new fraud-prevention solutions. Another 40% are considering upgrades.
• Reimbursement decisions vary: More than four in 10 (42%) Indonesian banking leaders say their organization reimburses scam victims on a case-by-case basis, 27 percentage points higher than the next-highest country surveyed.
• Banks report readiness for evolving payment requirements: Nearly two-thirds (63%) of respondents say their institution is fully or mostly prepared for QRIS/BI-FAST security requirements and increasing fraud-liability expectations, while 35% describe their organization as only partially prepared.
• Operational challenges extend beyond customer manipulation: Two in five (40%) respondents identify money mule detection, high alert volumes, and fragmented systems and tools among their fraud teams' biggest day-to-day challenges.

Download the report to view the complete results.

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About BioCatch:

BioCatch prevents fraud and financial crime by recognizing patterns in human behavior, continuously collecting more than 3,000 anonymized data points — keystroke and mouse activity, touch screen behavior, AI agent usage, jailbroken devices, and more — as people interact with their digital banking platforms. With these inputs, BioCatch's AI and machine-learning models continuously assess both user intent and any signs of coercion or manipulation throughout every millisecond of every digital banking session, allowing banks to distinguish the criminal from the legitimate in real time. Insights drawn from across the entire network of BioCatch institutions further amplify the power and accuracy of that real-time risk-scoring. As of the end of Q3 2026, more than 400 financial institutions deploy BioCatch solutions, analyzing 20 billion user sessions per month and protecting more than 760 million users on more than 1.8 billion devices around the world from fraud and financial crime.

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PR contact:

Mac King
BioCatch director of global marketing communications
Mac.King@BioCatch.com

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