FIFA World Cup fraud attempts were 3.6 times the 2023 baseline at Copa America 2024, ACI Worldwide says

ACI Worldwide says the fraud patterns seen around previous major tournaments are already back as the 2026 FIFA World Cup gets underway across the United States, Canada and Mexico. For PSPs, issuers and acquirers, the point is simple: tournament traffic is not just higher-volume traffic; it is also the kind of traffic that fraudsters like to test first.

1. ACI’s analysis is based on 24.5 million transactions across 61 live-event merchants serving global fan audiences. The company says it can monitor billions of transactions globally across issuers, acquirers and merchants, which lets it spot coordinated fraud activity before it becomes obvious to an individual merchant or bank.
2. During the build-up to Copa America 2024, card-not-present attempted fraud reached 4% of transaction value, averaging 3.6 times the 2023 baseline. ACI says the fraud window opened weeks before the first match and extended well beyond the final whistle, which is the part merchants tend to forget until chargebacks arrive.
3. Alternative payment methods (APMs) recorded a 0.57% attempted fraud rate, compared with 3.97% for traditional cards, a sevenfold difference. APM adoption has risen from 7% of transactions in 2022 to 24.8% year-to-date in 2026, so the payment mix itself is already shifting in a way that matters for risk teams.
4. Fraudsters are targeting higher-value purchases. In the pre-tournament build, fraudulent orders averaged $405, 1.5 times the $270 legitimate average, while average transaction value rose 1.2%. ACI says that pattern could push average fraudulent transaction values back toward $400 during the 2026 World Cup, which raises the risk of false declines for genuine fans buying more expensive tickets.
5. Domestic cards carried higher risk than cross-border cards in the pre-tournament build: 3.2% attempted fraud rate versus 1.4%. Cross-border card share also rose from an average of 7.53% of total spending to 11.47% in the run-up to Copa America 2024, and in May 2026 it already stood at 10.83%, above the annual average of 7.16%.

There is also a separate scam layer around the tournament itself. Silent Push says it has identified more than 300 pixel-perfect replica ticketing websites, while Check Point Research recorded 9,741 fraudulent World Cup-related domains registered in April 2026 alone, nearly four times the peak seen around the 2022 tournament.