Sweden experiences surge in payment service fraud

Sweden has seen a significant rise in fraud via payment services, with approximately 325,000 incidents reported annually, averaging one every two minutes. Statistics from the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (Finansinspektionen) show that 905 million SEK was stolen via payment services during the second half of 2025, representing a 54 percent increase compared to the 588 million SEK lost in the first half of the year.

Mithra Sundberg, head of payment supervision at Finansinspektionen, noted that the situation is serious as fraudsters are increasingly utilizing AI tools to make scams more convincing.

Victims often struggle to recover lost funds. While banks are generally responsible for unauthorized transactions, most modern scams involve the victim being manipulated into personally approving the transfer via tools like BankID or Swish. Because the user authorizes the payment themselves, they are rarely eligible for reimbursement.