Designing Payment Integrity in an Embedded World

At a Glance

• Payment fraud can begin before a payment is initiated, including during vendor onboarding or account changes.
• Traditional transaction controls remain essential, but even properly functioning controls may rely on information compromised earlier in the payment process.
• Embedded finance can place verification, access controls, approvals, and reporting closer to where payment information is created, changed, or acted upon.
• Organizations can strengthen payment integrity by evaluating controls throughout the payment workflow.

When organizations think about payment fraud, they often focus on the moment money leaves an account. But many fraud schemes begin much earlier.

A vendor may be onboarded using inaccurate information. Banking instructions may be changed through a convincing impersonation attempt. Stolen credentials or seemingly legitimate requests can enter a workflow long before treasury is asked to approve a payment.

As payment processes become faster, more digital, and increasingly connected to business software, organizations may need to rethink where controls belong. Rather than focusing only on detecting suspicious transactions, many are looking for ways to strengthen trust throughout the payment workflow.

Why Payment Fraud Is Moving Upstream

The financial crime environment continues to evolve in both scale and complexity, with fraudsters increasingly targeting the people, processes, and systems that influence payment decisions.

The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center reported more than $20 billion in cyber-enabled crime losses in 2025, with business email compromise and related social engineering among the costliest reported fraud schemes^[1].

Rather than manipulating a payment directly, they may attempt to:

• impersonate a vendor or business provider;
• submit fraudulent banking instructions;
• compromise employee credentials;
• use social engineering to influence approvals; or
• exploit gaps in manual workflows. 

Artificial intelligence is helping intensify these threats by making fraud attempts faster, more scalable, personalized, and convincing. AI-generated phishing messages, impersonation attempts, manipulated documents, and deepfakes may be harder to distinguish from legitimate communications.

As payments become faster, more digital, and more embedded in business processes, the time available to identify and address threats may narrow. This increases the importance of strengthening the workflows that create payments.

Why Traditional Controls Face New Challenges

Organizations have long relied on transaction monitoring, payment reviews, approval policies, and exception reporting to help identify fraud. These measures remain essential, but they may encounter risk too late or operate on information that was compromised earlier in the payment process.

For example, a vendor record may be created with inaccurate information, or payment instructions may be changed through a request that appears legitimate. By the time the transaction is reviewed, that information may already be trusted across the organization.

This is leading finance and treasury leaders to take a broader view of payment integrity, including supplier onboarding, account changes, system access, and approval workflows.

How Embedded Finance Can Support Payment Integrity

Embedded finance – through capabilities such as APIs and prebuilt data connections that integrate financial services into business software – can deliver more than convenience and automation. Equally important, embedded finance can help organizations place verification, access controls, approvals, and reporting closer to the points where payment information is created, changed, or acted upon.

By integrating treasury and payment capabilities directly into ERP, accounting, procurement, or other business systems, organizations can reduce reliance on disconnected processes such as emails, spreadsheets, manual rekeying, and system switching.

Potential benefits may include:

• more consistent approval workflows;
• better visibility into who initiated and approved payments;
• enhanced audit trails;
• integrated account verification processes; and
• reduced reliance on informal workarounds.

While embedded finance is not a fraud prevention solution by itself, it can help organizations place well-designed and effectively managed controls closer to where payment risk enters the workflow, making certain forms of manipulation more difficult and reduce reliance on fragmented or out-of-band processes.

Where Controls Can Be Embedded

Organizations seeking to strengthen payment integrity may consider evaluating controls around:

• Vendor Due Diligence

Vendor information often becomes the foundation for future payment activity, making early verification important to improving confidence in vendor data before it is used downstream.

• Instruction Change Confirmation

Requests to update banking information are common targets for social engineering and impersonation attempts, making independent confirmation through a trusted contact method an important consideration before implementing a change.

• Counterparty Verification

Verification of a counterparty’s identity, its relationship to the account it is believed to own or control, and supporting information such as email intelligence can help improve confidence before payment information is accepted or used downstream.

• Identity and Access Management

Controlling who can access, create, modify, approve, and release payment-related information is critical to maintaining workflow integrity.

• Transaction Approval

Consistent approval processes can help reduce errors and support stronger governance.

• Exception Monitoring and Escalation

Clear reporting, defined ownership, and timely escalation may improve the organization’s ability to act on unusual activity before funds move.

Designing the Future of Payment Workflows

Fraud prevention remains critical, but payment integrity extends beyond transaction monitoring. As fraud increasingly targets onboarding, account changes, system access, and approvals, organizations need to place controls closer to where risk enters the payment process.

Embedded finance can support this shift by bringing treasury capabilities, verification, access controls, reporting, and governance closer to where payment information is created, changed, or acted upon. Because payment fraud often begins before funds move, efforts to strengthen payment integrity should begin there too.

Learn More About Strengthening Payment Security

Explore these issues in greater depth in PNC’s recent fraud and security webinar, including practical considerations for strengthening controls throughout the payment workflow. Watch the webinar replay.