How financial volatility is creating new risk frontiers in 2025

Volatility has become the recent “normal” of the financial & economic landscape. Global crises, pendulum swings in exchange rates, and cryptocurrency highs and lows have defined the financial landscape of recent years. And this year, add in tariffs.

When financial markets swing, fraudsters act. Amidst the head-spinning changes, it can be hard for providers of alternative payment and asset services – from crypto to gold – to keep track of the vulnerabilities such rapid change exposes them to. The rewards are high, but with surging transactions and influxes of new customers, fraudsters are exploiting loopholes that traditional fraud detection systems struggle to keep up with.

Why financial volatility fuels fraud

When currencies swing wildly or cryptocurrency prices surge, transaction volumes spike. You only need to look at the surprising spike Bitcoin saw in January 2025, following the mention of cryptocurrency in U.S. President Trump’s inauguration speech, to see the financial markets are unpredictable.

“We can rely on Riskified to understand markets… something that is complementary to our own internal machine learning models.”

Yuri Gonzaga
Senior Product Manager, Fraud at Zepz

Understandably, providers leap on opportunities to scale and must act quickly to reap the rewards of increased transactions and popularity. Meanwhile, fraudsters thrive in these high-velocity environments precisely because they know platforms are focused on the influx of opportunity. This is when fraudsters often conduct high-velocity, low-value transactions because they know that fraud detection systems may struggle to keep pace with the overwhelming volume of orders.

The fraud playbook in a volatile economy

While alternative finance and neo-financial platforms were designed to revolutionize how we move money around the globe for the better, they have just as quickly become a magnet for cybercriminals. Remittance and asset trading platforms can be ideal monetization channels for fraudsters looking to cash out their illicit proceeds for a few reasons. Alternative currencies offer huge global reach, anonymity, and rewards are near-instant.

A few tactics and trends emerging:

  • First-time buyer fraud
  • Cashout fraud
  • Fraud-as-a-service

Explore our Risk Rundown for exclusive insights into the most prevalent fraud tactics in alternative finance, helping you protect what matters most — your customers, their transactions, and their trust in your business.