The Shift to Consumer Fraud in the Digital Age

Mastercard's Juan Funes on Fraud as a Service and Data-Driven Consumer Targeting Michael Novinson (MichaelNovinson) • November 14, 2025

Digital transformation accelerated by the pandemic created multiple entry points for fraudsters to exploit, shifting their focus from institutions to individual consumers.

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"Fraud in the traditional sense of me duping an institution into thinking that I am your cardholder has gone away and shifted to getting you as an individual to move money for the fraudster themselves," said Juan Alberto Funes Carniago, director of fraud and decisioning products at Mastercard. "You, as a financial institution, have controls in place to protect you from fraud. It's your every day, whereas an everyday consumer is not really thinking about fraud all the time."

Fraud-as-a-service platforms have democratized sophisticated attacks, allowing anyone to buy software that executes phishing campaigns ...