Invoice Fraud – How to Protect Your Business in 2026

Invoice fraud is something that not many businesses know about, until it’s too late. Mainly because it’s a scam that targets not just your business, but your clients too. It’s a fairly common scam tactic, with the aim of getting as much money from your customers as possible before anyone realises there’s a problem, by making subtle adjustments to your invoices. The impact of this can be felt by all businesses, but much more significantly by small businesses. Because they don’t earn as much as bigger businesses, not being paid can affect everything from productivity to being able to fulfil orders. And if you don’t have time or financial security to spend lots of time sorting out invoices that aren’t being paid, invoice fraud can cause some serious issues.

What is Invoice Fraud?

To commit invoice fraud, an individual poses as you or your company and interferes with the invoices you send out, sends out fake invoices to clients, or both. This is usually done by hacking into your email accounts to get the information they need. Things like your client information, supplier information and invoice patterns. 

Once they have the information they need, they can easily clone the invoice you’ve sent your past and current clients, analyse how you write to them and start impersonating you, sending their own invoices out to customers. In some cases, they’ll be a bit more subtle and try to hack into your accounting software to adjust the payment details on your invoices. This is even more devious, because every time a client pays a genuine invoice from you, the money is going directly to the fraudster’s bank account.

Invoice fraud doesn’t only target your clients. They can also target your suppliers to order goods on your account, but delivered to themselves. Once they access your system it’s surprising how much information they can get to.

How do Businesses Fall for Invoice Fraud?

It’s much easier to become a victim of invoice fraud than you think. Email phishing scams are getting more and more refined, and large-scale data breaches from other companies mean your passwords could be compromised before you know it. That’s why it’s so important to regularly update your passwords and check the information going out on your invoices.

Once a scammer has access to your email, they can invoice and request money from your clients while pretending to be you at any time they like. Even if they’re using their own bank details to get the money they’re asking for, no one would immediately flag the situation as fraud because businesses do change their bank details from time to time. It’s not unusual for someone to change their banking details, and as long as the names match, no one would think twice. That’s why we always recommend verifying with someone you know personally at a business if their account details change.

Spotting Invoice Fraud

If you suspect you’re being targeted, there are a couple of things you can do to detect a potential scammer. The first thing is to check through all of the invoices you receive and compare them to the previous ones you’ve got from the same client or supplier. A good way to spot fake invoice is the logo, which could be blurry or not quite right. Or there might be spelling mistakes, particularly in the names of people mentioned. 

Then, double check the email address that sent the invoice. If you recognise the client or supplier, find previous messages from them and compare the email address. If they’re different, message the older one to ask if they’ve changed their email, and if they’ve sent you anything. 

Finally, if you notice that a supplier has changed their payment details, send them a message and double check if the new information is correct. If it is, there’s no harm done, and most businesses will appreciate you looking out for them. If it isn’t, then you’ve highlighted that something is going on that they need to investigate. 

Preventing Invoice Fraud

As a business, there are a few things you can do to stop yourself from becoming a target. First, make sure that all of your staff members are trained on scam detection, particular phishing emails. Sadly, most data breaches nowadays are a result of employees clicking on links in phishing emails, allowing scammers in. When invoices are being sent out, make sure the payment details are being checked to make sure nothing has changed. Even if you only do this once a month, it can catch fraud early and limit the damage. Finally, make sure everyone is changing the passwords on their accounts regularly, and never use the same password for more than one of your accounts. The more secure the password, the better. 

Part of our job as debt collectors is to recognise when something isn’t quite right. When businesses notice their invoices aren’t being paid, they can call in a debt collector to help them. When we do our initial investigation work, our experts can pick up on discrepancies that could point to invoice fraud. If we believe this is the case, then we can guide you on next steps. If you’d like more information, or have questions on how invoice fraud could impact you, just get in touch with the team today.