Agentic Fraud to Exceed 90% of All Attacks by 2028 as Incode Warns of AI-Driven Surge

In this article, FF News reports on Incode’s warning that autonomous AI agents are quickly becoming the main engine behind fraud attempts. With automation, the amount of fraud criminals can run no longer depends on how many people they employ. AI-generated phishing and voice cloning now appear in a growing share of documented cases. The piece points to Incode’s identity verification, which tells real people apart from AI-generated identities, as the kind of defense businesses need as these attacks scale.

Read the transcription of this article, published by FF News on August 3, 2026.

How Does Agentic Fraud Differ From Traditional Cybercrime?

Agentic fraud represents a fundamental shift from human-led scams to autonomous AI operations. Unlike traditional phishing, where a human must manually interact with victims, AI agents can research targets, adapt to replies, and manage thousands of conversations simultaneously. This unlimited scalability means criminal output is no longer restricted by the number of people a scam compound can employ.

• Autonomous agents handle scams from start to finish without human intervention.
• API-driven costs allow criminals to launch massive campaigns for a fraction of traditional costs.
• AI-generated phishing converts 4.5x more effectively than human-written attempts.

What Are the Key Metrics Driving the AI Fraud Surge?

The data indicates that agentic fraud is not just a future risk but a current reality. In 2024, these attacks accounted for only 3% of attempts; by early 2026, that figure reached 40%. The financial impact is staggering, with the FBI logging $20.9 billion in US cyber-enabled losses in 2025 alone. Voice cloning technology is now present in over 50% of documented cases, highlighting the sophistication of these automated tools.

• 1,900% increase in payments to AI scam-service vendors since 2021.
• 25x projected growth in US fraud losses as automation deepens.
• 90% of professionals report facing an increase in AI-driven attacks.

Why is Identity Verification Critical to Stopping AI Agents?

As agentic fraud accelerates, traditional security measures are becoming obsolete. Because these agents can mimic human behavior and voice patterns perfectly, businesses must adopt identity verification solutions that can distinguish between biological humans and synthetic AI entities. The report suggests that 90% of current fraud incidents belong to categories that an autonomous agent can fully automate, necessitating a shift toward AI-native defense mechanisms.

FF NEWS TAKE:

The rise of agentic fraud is a watershed moment for the fintech industry. By removing the "human bottleneck," criminals have turned fraud into a high-margin, scalable software business. Incode’s data proves that we are no longer fighting hackers; we are fighting autonomous algorithms. This moves the needle significantly, forcing every financial institution to treat identity verification as a real-time AI arms race rather than a static compliance checkbox.

About FF News

FF News, also known as Fintech Finance, is a UK-based media and video production company built for the fintech industry. We started back in 2015 with a pretty simple idea: fintech is one of the most exciting things happening in the world, so why is so much of the coverage so dull? A decade on, we've grown into one of the most recognisable names in fintech media, with a global audience of more than 100,000 people who work in the industry.

About Incode

Incode is a global leader in AI-driven identity and trust, with a mission to power a world of trust at the speed of AI. The platform verifies identity and age, stops fraud, and turns verification into business enablement. Incode builds its own frontier models, adapting to any new fraud while letting good users through - trained on one of the industry's largest identity datasets: 7 billion+ trust checks and 400 million+ profiles worldwide, on a privacy-by-design architecture. Incode's customers include eight of the top ten U.S. banks, eight of the top nine U.S. telcos, three of the top three global neobanks, and four of the top five global marketplaces. Founded in 2015 in San Francisco, Incode is a team of 600+ across 25+ nationalities and a Leader in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Identity Verification.