Invoice fraud 101: 5 warning signs of a fraudulent invoice | Maventa
Your eye might already be well-trained to spot a fraudulent email from miles away. You know better than to hand over your bank details to claim an unbelievable bonus, even if the email appears to come from your company's CEO.
But what about fraudulent invoices? Would you recognise one?
It's estimated that the average middle-market business in the UK alone loses over £295,000 annually to invoice fraud (Medius, 2022). This is roughly equivalent to a business's entire digital transformation budget, or the cost of launching a major go-to-market campaign.
Invoice fraud is a calculated effort to attack a company's cash flow by exploiting weak points in payment processes. The right technology helps you identify these threats early on, and protect your finances.
We sat down with Maventa's Information Security Manager, Karoliina Kärkkäinen, to understand what invoice fraud actually is and how to spot one.
Invoice fraud is growing across Europe
Invoice fraud, often carried out through business email compromise (BEC) and vendor email compromise (VEC), continues to increase across Europe. The threat is becoming more advanced and technical, and it is driven by two main trends:
1. Exploiting trust and urgency
Criminals no longer rely on getting through technical weaknesses. They focus on exploiting the human in all of us. Attackers are focused on deceiving employees with urgent, convincing requests from senior leaders or trusted suppliers.
2. Perfecting the deception with AI
The rise of Generative AI allows criminals to craft perfectly worded, grammatically flawless emails and convincing fake documents at scale. This eliminates the traditional red flag of "typos," making manual detection nearly impossible.
When an attacker, for example, successfully intercepts an existing email chain or impersonates a vendor, they insert a revised PDF invoice containing their own bank details. It’s an effective, low-tech way to steal a high-value payment. Needless to say, also extremely hard to spot.
"Keep in mind that the attacker’s goal may not be to divert a payment at all, but simply to get someone to click a malicious link or open an attachment."
Karoliina Kärkkäinen, Information Security Manager, Maventa
Did I receive a fraud invoice? Watch out for these 5 signs
In a manual or semi-digital process (such as PDFs exchanged over email), your finance team relies on human vigilance. According to Karoliina, these are the common signs of an invoice scam to keep your eye out for:
Sign 1: Changes in payment details
The supplier suddenly requests a change to their bank account, often to an account based in a different country or bank than previous payments.
Sign 2: Urgency and pressure
The invoice or accompanying email demands immediate payment, often citing penalties or a "time-sensitive" opportunity to skip the normal approval process.
Sign 3: Round numbers
Fraudulent invoices often feature suspiciously round or slightly unusual amounts, intended to fly under the radar.
Sign 4: Mismatched identity
The email address, while appearing correct, is slightly altered (e.g., john.smithh@vendor.com), or the sender is a name you don't typically interact with at that company.
Sign 5: Lack of purchase order (PO)
The invoice arrives without a corresponding, verified PO, forcing the AP team to manually approve the payment based only on the supplier's name.
Build a safer invoicing experience into your product
As a software provider, you understand that the security of a platform is defined by its weakest link. In invoicing, the traditional process - paper, emailed PDFs -, is riddled with weak links, leaving your end-customers' financial operations vulnerable.
Want to offer your customers a safer alternative to invoicing? Contact us to chat with our e-invoicing experts:
