Arizona Tribune - Trustmi Survey: Employees are Confident They Can Spot Payment Fraud - But AI Says Otherwise

NEW YORK, NY / ACCESS Newswire / July 15, 2026 / A recent survey by Trustmi, a leader in behavioral AI payment security, found that while organizations are continuing to invest in traditional cybersecurity training and awareness, there is still a significant gap in the ability of employees who handle payments and financial workflows to identify modern threats.. AI-driven fraud is increasingly bypassing traditional phishing tactics altogether and instead exploits trusted workplace communications, creating a dangerous gap between what employees think they can recognize and what modern fraud actually looks like.

That gap is not theoretical. 40% of employees say they or someone at their company has already been targeted by an impersonation attempt, including 22% who were targeted personally.

"People have been trained to spot the obvious signs of phishing, but today's payment fraud is designed to blend into trusted business communications," said Shai Gabay, Co-founder and CEO, Trustmi. "When employees are overly confident in their ability to spot fraud, organizations are left exposed to sophisticated AI-powered attacks that are designed to appear completely legitimate. To keep pace with evolving fraud tactics, organizations cannot rely solely on employee vigilance; They need protections built into payment workflows to catch fraud before money moves."

Confident, But Looking for the Wrong Signals

Findings suggest employee confidence is rooted in their ability to spot traditional fraud tactics. A large majority (78% of respondents) said they were confident they could identify a fraudulent payment request at work. But, they're still looking for the traditional phishing tactics - such as typos or fake email addresses - they were trained to recognize years ago. 70% rank typos, fonts or grammatical errors as their No. 1 warning sign.

Every other cue trails well behind: 25% cite an unfamiliar sender, 22% unusual urgency, and 16% a suspicious invoice. Even unusual urgency - the pressure tactic common to executive-impersonation and payment-diversion scams - ranks near the bottom. The reliance on old signals is sharpest among the youngest workers: Gen Z ranks grammar mistakes as a top warning sign more than any other generation (82%), compared with 50% of Baby Boomers.

Employees do sense the shift, even if their habits haven't caught up: 84% believe that AI-generated voice, video and message impersonation will make workplace fraud harder to detect.

Trust Is the New Attack Surface

The signals employees trust most are the ones attackers now forge, hijack, or take over. The majority (81%) of employees surveyed indicated that they would likely assume a payment request is legitimate if it appeared in an existing email thread (24% were very likely). This points to a potential blind spot: requests that arrive inside familiar workflows may receive less scrutiny. Respondents say the biggest trust signals for payment requests include:

• An existing email thread (33%)

• Seeing an executive's work email address (30%)

• References to real company projects (29%)

Current Defenses Aren't Enough

Employees recognize that protecting against modern fraud requires more than better inbox defenses: the majority of respondents agree that email filters alone are not enough to stop modern workplace fraud (79%).

Employees want more layered controls that look beyond email security towards fraud prevention that's directly embedded into workplace processes:

• 52% want automated fraud detection

• 50% want stronger email security

• 49% want more fraud-specific awareness training

• 35% want real-time payment workflow alerts

• 34% want better visibility into vendor or payment changes

These findings underscore that modern payment fraud is no longer just suspicious emails and blatant phishing attempts. As AI makes impersonation more convincing, organizations need more than employee training (and, 61% of respondents say their employer provides fraud training rarely or not at all). They need automated safeguards that verify payment requests before money moves.

To view the full survey findings, visit this link.

To read more about the finance and security controls overlook, visit Trustmi's 2026 Payment Security & Risk Benchmark Report

Methodology

"Methodology: This survey polled 1,000 U.S. employees age 18+ who work with payment-related workflows, including invoices, vendor communications, payment approvals, and finance systems, in June 2026. It focused on how they interact with workplace payment processes and business communications."

About Trustmi
Trustmi is the leading behavioral AI platform for payment security, helping enterprises stop fraud and costly payment errors before money moves. As fraud increasingly arrives "pre-approved" - designed to pass existing controls - Trustmi provides a critical verification layer across the entire payment lifecycle. By correlating signals across email, vendor behavior, financial documents, and payment workflows, Trustmi detects sophisticated, socially engineered attacks that traditional security and finance controls miss. Trusted by global enterprises with complex payment environments, Trustmi protects over $240 billion in payments annually and has helped prevent more than $1 billion in fraud and $5 billion in payment errors. Founded in 2021, Trustmi is headquartered in New York City and backed by leading investors including Cyberstarts and Insight Partners. For more information, visit https://www.trustmi.ai/.

Contact

PAN for Trustmi
[email protected]

SOURCE: Trustmi

View the original press release on ACCESS Newswire

A.Williams--AT