The silent profit killer threatening multi-site operations
Invoice fraud isn't just a finance problem anymore, it's an operational crisis that's quietly draining businesses of billions while most operations managers remain unaware of the true scale of the threat.
The shocking reality: 79% of organisations were targeted by payment fraud attempts in 2024 with invoice fraud in the U.S. averaging $133,000 per incident. For multi-site hospitality, care and leisure operations already operating on razor-thin margins, a single successful fraud attack can wipe out months of hard-earned profit.
Yet here's what keeps me up at night: while Finance teams chase paperwork and Operations teams make decisions without current position data, fraudsters are exploiting this disconnect with increasingly sophisticated attacks that traditional controls simply can't catch.
The 2025-2026 fraud landscape: what you need to know
The AI-powered fraud revolution
According to Gartner's 2025 Hype Cycle for Fraud and Financial Crime Prevention, we're witnessing an unprecedented escalation in fraud sophistication. Fraudsters are now deploying:
- Generative AI for synthetic identities - Creating convincing fake vendor profiles that pass traditional verification
- Deepfake technology - Voice cloning tools that can impersonate CEOs or suppliers using just seconds of audio from social media
- AI-powered phishing - Automated attacks that craft personalised, highly convincing fraud attempts at scale
The numbers are staggering:
- Deloitte projects U.S. losses from Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud alone could surge to nearly $15 billion by 2028
- Cheque fraud accounts for over 60% of payment fraud incidents, according to the 2025 AFP Payments Fraud and Control Survey
- Business Email Compromise (BEC) scams drained $6.7 billion globally in 2023
- 34% of businesses experienced invoice fraud in the past year, with average losses of $18,100 per incident
- 63% of organisations cite BEC as their number one fraud avenue
The convergence crisis: why 2026 changes everything
Gartner predicts that by the end of the decade, 50% of large financial institutions and online retailers will consolidate online fraud prevention into cyber security operations, a trend they call "Cyber-Fraud Fusion."
What does this mean for operations managers? The silos between IT security, finance controls and operational processes are breaking down. Fraud is no longer just Finance's problem, it's an enterprise-wide operational risk that demands unified real-time visibility.
The multi-site vulnerability: why your operation is particularly at risk
Multi-site operations face a unique perfect storm of fraud vulnerabilities:
1. Decentralised procurement complexity
When you're managing dozens or hundreds of locations, each making purchasing decisions independently, you create blind spots that fraudsters actively exploit. Ghost vendors slip through at one site. Duplicate invoices get paid at another. Invoice manipulation goes unnoticed because no single person sees the full picture.
2. The Operations-Finance disconnect
Our research shows Finance teams spend approximately 80% of their time chasing paperwork while Operations makes decisions without current position data. This gap creates the perfect conditions for fraud:
- Operations approves purchases based on outdated budgets
- Finance processes invoices without operational context
- Neither team has real-time visibility into what's actually happening
3. Manual processes at scale
When processing hundreds or thousands of invoices monthly across multiple sites, manual verification becomes statistically impossible. According to recent data:
- Only 5% of midsize businesses have fully automated their accounts payable and accounts receivable
- Manual processes consume 80% of finance teams' time
- Companies experience an average of 105 days payment delay in some industries
What to look out for: red flags operations managers can't ignore
1. Sophisticated BEC Attacks
Business Email Compromise now accounts for 63% of fraud attempts. Fraudsters no longer just spoof email addresses, they study your communication patterns, timing and even writing style to create virtually undetectable impersonation.
Warning signs:
- Urgent payment requests outside normal approval workflows
- Vendor bank detail change requests via email (especially if unsolicited)
- Requests to bypass standard procedures "just this once"
2. AI-enhanced invoice manipulation
With AI tools, fraudsters can now:
- Generate invoice documents that perfectly match legitimate supplier formatting
- Alter PDFs inways that traditional detection tools miss
- Create fake supporting documentation at scale
Watch for:
- Invoice amounts that are rounded numbers or just below approval thresholds
- Invoices without proper purchase order references
- Duplicate invoice numbers across different vendors
- Sudden increases in invoice frequency or amounts from established suppliers
3. Ghost supplier schemes
According to industry research, ghost suppliers cost businesses an average of $40,000 before detection. These fake suppliers pass initial verification but exist solely to siphon funds. In one documented case, an employee colluded with a fictitious vendor, creating invoices for services never rendered and splitting the proceeds. The scheme ran for 18 months before detection, costing the business over $60,000.
Red flags:
- New vendors with minimal online presence
- Vendors with addresses matching employee addresses
- Suppliers who always request specific payment methods (especially checks or immediate transfers)
- Missing or incomplete supplier documentation
The Psychology of GhostVendors: Fraudsters often create vendor profiles that seem "just credible enough" - not too perfect, but not raising immediate red flags. They may even submit a few small, legitimate-looking invoices to establish trust before submitting larger fraudulent ones.
4. Duplicate Payment Fraud
When managing multiple sites, duplicate invoices become surprisingly easy to execute. A fraudster submits the same invoice twice, perhaps with slight variations in invoice numbers ordates, counting on the lack of centralised visibility to prevent detection.
Common scenarios:
- Same invoice submitted to two different locations
- Invoice resubmitted months later when staff has changed
- Slight variations in formatting or amounts to evade automated detection
- Invoices split across accounting periods to avoid year-end reconciliation
Multi-site operations processing hundreds of invoices weekly often lack the centralised systems to catch duplicates across locations. This is where automated duplicate detection becomes essential, it can identify matching vendors, amounts, dates and invoice numbers across your entire operation instantly.
5. The rise of instant payment exploitation
As highlighted in the Juniper Research whitepaper on Open Banking and instant payments, the instant payments market will grow 161% by 2028. While this brings efficiency, it also creates new vulnerabilities:
- Payments settle in under 10 seconds, making fraud recovery nearly impossible
- The irrevocable nature of instant payments means once funds transfer, they're gone
- Real-time payment rails process transactions before traditional fraud checks can complete
6. The human element: social engineering at scale
Gartner's research emphasises that fraudsters increasingly target the human element. With remote work and distributed teams, operations managers face:
- Vishing (VoicePhishing): AI voice cloning tools that can defeat even voice biometric security
- Romance and relationship scams: Targeting employees with access to payment systems
- Impersonation scams: Fraudsters posing as senior executives, suppliers or even regulators
The 2025 UK Finance report shows impersonation scams (police, bank officials, executives) remain prevalent despite awareness campaigns, with losses increasing 35% year-over-year for romance scams alone.
The financial impact: more than just the stolen funds
When we talk about the cost of invoice fraud, most people think only about the stolen money. But the true impact runs much deeper:
Direct costs
- $133,000 -Average loss per invoice fraud incident in the U.S.
- $39,406 - Average annual cost from late payments per company
- Only 22% of businesses recovered three-quarters or moreof stolen funds in 2024
- 30% couldn't reclaim any stolen funds
Hidden operational costs
- Lost productivity: Finance teams spending 80% of time on manual reconciliation
- Delayed decisions: Operations working with outdated or incomplete data
- Supplier relationship damage: Legitimate invoices delayed while investigating fraud
- Reputational harm: Loss of trust from customers and partners
What this means for your operation
The convergence of AI-powered fraud tactics, the explosion of instant payments and the unique vulnerabilities of multi-site operations creates an urgent imperative: traditional fraud prevention approaches are no longer sufficient.
Operations managers must recognise that invoice fraud is not solely a finance problem - it's an operational risk that directly impacts your ability to protect the revenue you've already earned. The 5-10% of revenue that disappears through hidden costs like fraud, late payments and manual inefficiencies is revenue that never makes it to your bottom line.
The gap between Operations and Finance creates the vulnerability. The lack of real-time visibility enables the exploitation. The reliance on manual processes makes detection statistically impossible at scale.
Conclusion
Invoice fraud has evolved from a manageable nuisance into a sophisticated, AI-powered threat that specifically targets the operational complexity of multi-site businesses. With 79% of organisations experiencing fraud attempts and average losses exceeding $133,000 per incident, the question is no longer whether your operation is at risk, it's whether you have the visibility and controls to detect and prevent fraud before it destroys your margins.
The fraudsters have industrialised their approach using AI, deepfakes and social engineering. They understand your operational vulnerabilities better than you might: the decentralised procurement across sites, the Operations-Finance disconnect and the manual processes that make detection impossible at scale.
For operations managers in hospitality, care and leisure sectors, the message is clear: fraud prevention is operational excellence. The same systems that eliminate hidden costs and improve efficiency are the systems that prevent fraud. Real-time visibility, automated controls and unified platforms aren't just nice to have - they're essential for survival in an environment where fraudsters are constantly adapting.
The cost of inaction far exceeds the investment in prevention. When 78% of fraud victims can't recover their losses, protection becomes preservation.
Ready to understand how unified visibility can protect your operation from invoice fraud?
In Part 2 of this series, we'll explore the five essential steps to managing invoice fraud at scale and how purpose-built solutions can give multi-site operations the protection they need.
