Fraud prevention is no longer defined by how many tools a merchant deploys, but by how well those tools work together across the full payment journey.
That is the central insight of PYMNTS Intelligence’s December Payments Orchestration Tracker, “Orchestrating Trust: The Future of Fraud Prevention in Payments.” The report argues that the next phase of fraud management is less about adding new point solutions and more about coordinating signals, decisions and workflows in real time. As digital commerce scales and fraud tactics grow more adaptive, fragmented defenses are becoming a liability rather than a safeguard.
The report finds that merchants are increasingly caught between two competing pressures: the need to stop sophisticated fraud attacks and the imperative to avoid friction that drives away legitimate customers. Traditional rules engines and standalone fraud tools struggle to keep pace with attackers that deploy bots, account takeovers, synthetic identities and friendly fraud in parallel. At the same time, machine learning models require richer context to make accurate decisions. Fraud orchestration is positioned as the layer that connects these elements, allowing organizations to sequence risk checks intelligently and adjust defenses dynamically as threats evolve.
Rather than treating fraud as a moment at checkout, the report frames it as a continuous risk management challenge that spans onboarding, authentication, authorization and post-transaction disputes. By integrating identity verification, behavioral analytics, device intelligence and transaction data into a unified workflow, orchestration platforms aim to protect revenue while preserving customer trust.
Key data points from the report underscore why this shift is accelerating:
- 85% of merchants say their biggest fraud-prevention challenge is reducing friction for legitimate customers, highlighting the cost of false declines and over-verification in digital checkout flows.
- 53% of U.S. financial institutions already use a fraud-orchestration solution or expect to adopt one soon, reflecting growing recognition that siloed tools cannot keep up with cross-channel threats.
- 51% of merchants expect spending on fraud-management staff to remain flat or decline, even as attacks increase, signaling a move toward automated, orchestration-driven approaches rather than labor-intensive reviews.
Beyond these headline findings, the report points to several structural changes reshaping fraud strategy. One is the growing operational burden created by managing multiple gateways, payment service providers and fraud vendors. Fragmentation itself introduces risk, slows iteration and complicates response when providers experience outages. Orchestration reduces that complexity by centralizing integrations and decision logic, allowing teams to test, tune and deploy fraud strategies faster.
Another theme is the convergence of payments optimization and fraud prevention. Routing decisions, authorization rates and risk assessments are increasingly interdependent. Orchestration enables merchants to align these objectives, tightening controls only when risk justifies it and maintaining smoother experiences for trusted customers. This becomes especially critical as instant payments and embedded commerce compress decision windows to milliseconds.
Finally, the report emphasizes that fraud orchestration does not end at authorization. Effective strategies extend across the entire lifecycle, from account creation to dispute management. As fraudsters exploit gaps between channels and stages, coordinated visibility and control become essential. The report concludes that merchants and financial institutions that unify payments and fraud through orchestration will be better positioned to adapt, scale and preserve trust in an increasingly complex digital economy.
