High-Risk Payments: Why Document Fraud Checks Are Essential  

Introduction 

Payments providers that operate in high-risk environments such as cross-border transfers, crypto gateways and unverified merchant accounts face a balancing act: fast onboarding and real-time payment transfers, whilst managing the risk of money laundering and account takeover fraud.   
 
Enhanced Customer Due Diligence (ECDD) is a core requirement under anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorism financing regulations. Yet many providers focus heavily on identity verification and overlook the risks of forged or altered supporting documents. Collecting documents is not enough. It is just as important to authenticate the documents and confirm that the information they contain is accurate. This is where document fraud detection becomes an essential part of the compliance framework. 

The Risk Landscape for High-Risk Payments 

The opportunity for fraud has never been greater. Large scale data leaks, hacking, phishing and AI-driven fraud tactics make the speed and scale of fraud exponential. Document and image forgery tools are accessible, cheap and scalable.   
 
Alongside these risks, payments providers are seeing more impersonation attempts, account takeovers and synthetic identity fraud that blend real and fabricated information. Fraudsters often present fake invoices, altered bank statements or other manipulated financial documents to pass ECDD and Know Your Business (KYB) checks. Too often, the due diligence process stops once the documents are collected, without authenticating the content or verifying their legitimacy. 
 
Regulators are responding. AUSTRAC in Australia, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the UK, FinCEN in the US, and the Financial Markets Authority in New Zealand are increasing scrutiny on high-risk payment flows. Their focus covers cross-border remittances, cryptocurrency transactions, the reactivation of dormant accounts and unusually large or frequent payments from newly established or high-risk businesses.  

Fortiro’s analysis shows that more than 30 per cent of bank statements associated with deliquent accounts that pilot clients submit during retrospective risk reviews contain highly suspicious documents. It flagged earlier, in onboarding, it may have prevented approval and subsequent deliquency.  

The threat is growing. In the United States, for example, FinCEN has issued alerts warning that criminals are now creating falsified identity documents with generative AI to bypass onboarding and due diligence controls, making document authentication an increasingly critical safeguard for payment providers. 

For risk professionals, the key message is clear. High-risk payment KYC requires more than traditional identity checks. Documents are now a major vector for fraud, and ECDD is undermined when their authenticity is assumed rather than proven. 

How Document Fraud Impacts in Onboarding 

Fraudsters have access to low-cost, easy-to-use software that allows them to create fake documents that appear legitimate. Some alter transaction details, names or account numbers through PDF tampering. A common tactic is to recycle previously used documents with minor edits so they can be resubmitted without raising suspicion. 
 
These techniques show up in many ways. A new business might present a forged invoice to justify a large foreign exchange transfer. A dormant account could be reactivated with a bank statement showing a large balance, even though the file’s metadata reveals it was altered shortly before submission. In some cases, a fraudster may use genuine KYC documents in combination with falsified business paperwork to secure approval for a new account. 
 
Manual reviews struggle to detect such manipulations. Even experienced compliance teams can miss shallowfakes, which are digitally altered but visually convincing documents. Identifying inconsistencies across multiple submissions requires time and resources, making it difficult to scale checks as onboarding volumes grow. This is why automated, scalable document fraud detection has become essential for payment providers. For more detail on shallowfakes, deepfakes and the impact on financial services organisations, read our article.  

Strengthening ECDD with Document Fraud Detection 

Fortiro Protect closes the gap in ECDD and KYB processes by authenticating documents and detecting forgeries. The system applies deep document forensic checks to identify and stop suspicious documents. 
 
Integrating a solution like Fortiro Protect into onboarding and payment review workflows allows providers to move quickly and increase detection without slowing down processes. It reduces reliance on manual reviews and delivers audit-ready documentation that increases ability to adhere to regulatory expectations. 
 
The impact is clear from customer results. In the payments sector, Fortiro flags 22 per cent of bank statements in high-risk ECDD reviews as highly suspicious of fabrication or tampering.  Another provider reduced manual document reviews by half without any rise in false positives. 
 
As one customer explained, “We use Fortiro to intercept document fraud before it becomes a chargeback. Their document fraud engine gives us confidence that what we are seeing is genuine, and that we can back it up with data when regulators ask.” 

Conclusion 

An ECDD process is only as strong as its weakest point. For many payments providers, that weakness is the assumption that with strong identity verification, supporting documents are assumed genuine. Fraudsters are adept at making forged documents appear real. By authenticating both the content and the file itself, providers can reduce the risk of financial loss, regulatory action and reputational damage caused by document fraud. 
 
Fortiro Protect gives compliance teams the tools they need to identify document fraud before money moves, before accounts are opened and before regulators come calling. It is a proven, scalable solution for strengthening risk and compliance frameworks. 

Talk to Fortiro today about how to integrate document fraud detection into your ECDD workflows and reduce losses from document fraud.