Digital financial services have expanded access to banking, payments, credit, and savings for millions of women around the world. But the same technologies creating opportunity are also creating new opportunities for fraud.
Socially engineered financial fraud—including phishing, impersonation scams, AI-generated deepfakes, and identity theft—is becoming more sophisticated, more personalized, and more difficult to detect. Women often experience these risks differently due to persistent gaps in digital access, financial capability, online safety, and legal protections.
This policy brief explores how policymakers, regulators, and financial service providers can build safer digital financial ecosystems that protect consumers while supporting continued innovation and financial inclusion. It highlights evidence from around the world and offers practical policy recommendations to strengthen trust in digital finance.
Key Insights
- Digital fraud is becoming more sophisticated. AI is making scams cheaper to create, easier to personalize, and harder to detect, increasing risks for consumers worldwide.
- Women face distinct risks. Structural barriers—including lower digital access, lower trust in digital financial services, and greater exposure to online harassment—can make women more vulnerable to fraud and less likely to recover when it occurs.
- Trust is critical to financial inclusion. When consumers fear fraud, they are less likely to adopt or continue using digital financial services, slowing progress toward greater financial inclusion.
- Good design can reduce fraud. Features such as transaction confirmations, cooling-off periods, recipient verification, AI-powered fraud detection, and women-centered product design can significantly improve consumer protection.
- Policy must keep pace with technology. Stronger legal frameworks, coordinated oversight, better data, digital financial capability programs, and accessible reporting mechanisms are essential to protecting consumers in an AI-driven financial landscape.
Policy Recommendations
- Collect and use gender-disaggregated fraud data.
- Build fraud prevention into digital financial systems.
- Strengthen women’s digital financial capability.
- Improve coordination across financial, telecommunications, and data authorities.
- Modernize legal frameworks to address AI-enabled fraud and cyber harassment.
- Create accessible, confidential fraud reporting and redress mechanisms.
Download the policy brief
Read Socially Engineered Financial Fraud and Scams: How Can Policy Better Protect Women Users? to explore global evidence, country case studies, and practical recommendations for building digital financial systems that are safer, more trusted, and more inclusive for women.
