In the evolving landscape of modern commerce, payments transcend mere financial transfers; they are fundamentally about trust. This trust—ensuring a transaction's legitimacy, a supplier's authenticity, and the true identity behind a purchase—is increasingly under threat. As technological innovation accelerates, the stakes for maintaining competitive advantage rise, pushing companies to seek more sophisticated solutions for payment security.
During a recent discussion for the "What’s Next in Payments" series, PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster explored these challenges with Jonathan Beckham, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Edenred Pay. Beckham articulated a clear vision for the future: zero fraud and a completely frictionless experience for customers. These two key performance indicators (KPIs) drive Edenred Pay’s strategy, especially in light of sobering statistics from 2024, where 80% of companies faced payment fraud attempts, yet only 20% managed to recover their losses.
"We want to make sure all transactions are secure and getting to the right people in the right place, but without gigantic brick walls," Beckham explained. He envisions "intelligent invisible guardrails" as the path forward, suggesting that trusted invisibility will become the new differentiator in payments. This paradigm shift means providing robust security that operates seamlessly in the background, without impeding legitimate business activities.
The Evolution of Payment Security: Innovative yet Invisible
The payments industry has long grappled with the delicate balance between stringent security measures and user convenience. However, as we move through 2025 and into 2026, this equilibrium is becoming harder to achieve. The widespread accessibility of advanced tools, including artificial intelligence (AI), means that fraudsters now wield the same sophisticated technologies as those dedicated to defense. At the same time, businesses and consumers demand increasingly frictionless experiences, intolerant of delays or false positives that disrupt operations.
Webster highlighted the inherent trade-offs: while zero fraud is technically attainable in an overly restrictive environment, businesses must be willing to accept a degree of calculated risk to foster innovation and learning. Beckham underscored that the current situation is akin to a "virtual arms race" where continuous adaptation is paramount. He emphasized that comprehensive security encompasses three critical pillars: people, processes, and technology. Often, the human element—through education and proper training on system usage and interaction—is overlooked but remains crucial for effective defense.
What is now emerging is a transformative model: an invisible infrastructure built upon adaptive, intelligent, and interoperable systems. These systems are designed to protect both parties in a transaction so subtly that their presence goes unnoticed. The standards for security have significantly advanced; yesterday’s innovations, such as two-factor authentication and rule-based fraud detection, are no longer groundbreaking but merely fundamental expectations. "If you’re not applying AI and machine learning to your transactions, then you’re behind," Beckham asserted, stressing the need for continuous technological evolution to combat the ever-changing nature of fraud.
AI's Transformative Leap: From Static Rules to Dynamic Behavior
For many years, fraud prevention was predominantly dictated by static rules. These involved setting thresholds for payments and implementing rigid policies where, for instance, a transaction exceeding a predetermined average would trigger an alarm. The significant drawback of such systems was their propensity for generating numerous false positives, leading to unnecessary friction and user annoyance.
Edenred Pay aims to simplify this. Beckham noted, "We want to simplify it down and use these systems that are creating intelligent invisible guardrails to only notify us when there’s truly an anomaly. We don’t want to get annoyed by a whole bunch of alerts or false positives." This shift represents a move from reactive, rule-based detection to proactive, behavioral analytics—a far more nuanced and effective approach.
While consumer payments often capture public attention, Edenred Pay’s strategic focus remains firmly on the more intricate world of business-to-business (B2B) transactions. It is within this complex domain that the advanced invisible infrastructure is actively being developed. Beckham highlighted that Edenred Pay provides integrated payables across various modalities, including checks, ACH transfers, and virtual cards, each with its unique security requirements. In the B2B sphere, every stage, from invoice generation to final settlement, demands robust protection. However, many companies still rely on legacy methods like paper checks, inadvertently leaving themselves vulnerable to fraud. Beckham pointed out the staggering volume of check usage, with approximately three billion commercial checks processed in the U.S. last year, identifying them as the single largest vector for fraud.
Combating Sophisticated Threats and Building for Tomorrow's B2B
Even the most technologically advanced systems can be compromised if human elements are exploited. The rise of social engineering, business email compromise (BEC), and increasingly convincing AI-generated deepfakes are raising the bar for attackers. Beckham noted an alarming five-fold increase in deepfake technology usage last year alone. Furthermore, BEC attacks, once targeting primarily CEOs, have evolved to meticulously impersonate vendors and even seize control of entire company accounts through highly nuanced and deceptive tactics.
To counter these sophisticated threats, a layered defense strategy is essential. This includes advanced behavioral analytics, continuous employee education to recognize new forms of deception, and the development of evolving identity management standards. Beckham elaborated on the growing importance of interoperability in identity management, stressing the need for seamless sharing and validation of identity credentials for both businesses and their employees. He foresees a near future—potentially within the next couple of years—where vendor identities can be validated as effortlessly and securely as using a digital wallet like Apple Wallet.
Drawing an analogy to secure websites, Beckham referenced certificate issuers as independently trusted providers that are audited and hold their own credentials. He envisions a similar framework for Know Your Business (KYB) and broader business identity credentials, where trusted third-party providers validate and issue digital identities. This approach promises to establish a new level of confidence and security in B2B transactions, making the invisible guardrails not only intelligent but also universally trusted.
