Evidence literacy · Explainer
How to read a headline about payment fraud
Five questions to ask before comparing a fraud rate or a loss figure.
What is being counted?
A count of reports, transactions, affected people, and dollars lost describes different things. An incident rate cannot by itself tell you a dollar-loss rate.
Who is included?
Ask whether the number covers an entire network, one provider, selected institutions, or survey respondents. Look for the period, definitions, and denominator.
Who produced the number?
An operator’s disclosure, a consumer survey, and a regulator’s complaint dataset have different purposes and limitations. Reported activity does not capture every unreported event.
What is missing?
Reimbursement outcomes need their own evidence. A low reported incident rate does not establish how a particular complaint will be handled. This is a reading checklist, not a ranking of payment apps.
Editorial analysis: this checklist explains how to assess evidence. It presents no new fraud statistics.
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