With the European payments sector undergoing rapid modernisation, critical questions around investment, regulation, and market alignment are dominating the agendas of banks, fintechs, regulators, payments providers, and technology providers. To uncover the practical choices defining today’s market, Finextra Research surveyed 195 industry professionals in April 2026 across Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the UK, and Belgium. 

Finding the right balance between great shopping experiences and security can be challenging. Our report explores practical approaches to help tackle three common challenges for retailers: refund abuse, account takeovers and chargebacks.

Digital transactions are expected to increase from $12.3 trillion in 2025 to nearly $17 trillion in 2028, driven by a stronger focus on customer convenience, the expansion of e-commerce, and high levels of smartphone adoption. While this growth is good for businesses, it’s also good for organized, technologically sophisticated criminal groups. 

This playbook explores the current state of fraud, AI-powered security challenges, and the latest tools and strategies companies can use to protect themselves from digital attacks.

Across enterprise commerce, fraud no longer behaves like a series of isolated incidents. It operates as repeatable, automated playbooks — continuously tested, refined, and redeployed across environments. The result is not just more fraud, but fraud engineered to blend in with legitimate customer behavior. That shift is changing where fraud risk sits, how it needs to be managed, and what it costs when it isn’t.

Ecommpay’s new white paper explores how fraud is evolving, where merchants are most exposed, and what needs to happen next. Featuring expert insight from Uber Payments UK, Paynt, Allica Bank, Women in Identity and Ramp Network, this is a sharp, high-value read for merchants navigating a faster, more sophisticated fraud landscape.

Inside the report:

• Why modern fraud is becoming harder to detect and harder to stop

Our annual Global eCommerce Payments & Fraud Report, produced by the Merchant Risk Council along with Visa Acceptance Solutions, surveyed merchants of all sizes from around the world to offer valuable insight into current payment acceptance and fraud trends. The report includes how merchants accept payments and what’s coming next, how fraud is managed across the commerce lifecycle, where disputes, refunds, and abuse are showing up, how payments and fraud trends differ globally as well as how merchants are integrating AI into their fraud strategies.

The 2026 Global eCommerce Payments and Fraud Report is your go-to resource for understanding the latest trends shaping the eCommerce payments and fraud prevention landscape. Based on our annual global survey of 1,200+ eCommerce merchants, this report provides insights from businesses of all sizes—SMBs, mid-market, and enterprise merchants—across 35+ countries in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific (APAC), and Latin America (LATAM).

Ecommerce is one of the leading adopters of artificial intelligence (AI), with use cases from personalized product recommendations and enhanced customer service to streamlined workflows, smart logistics, and sales/demand forecasting. Organizations that adopt AI business strategies generate an average of 10-12% extra revenue.

With more and more consumers gravitating toward online shopping ( 21% of retail purchases in 2025 will be made online), it’s more important than ever for ecommerce brands to adopt AI if they hope to keep up with consumer expectations.