The report "Verizon Report Warns of AI-Fueled Social Engineering Surge" describes a concrete shift in local wallets and aggregated payments. Artificial intelligence is changing the economics of cybercrime, giving scammers and fraudsters a faster way to scale attacks that companies already struggle to stop. Complete the form to unlock this article and enjoy unlimited free access to all PYMNTS content — no additional logins required. By completing this form, you agree to receive marketing communications from PYMNTS and to the sharing of your information with our sponsor, if applicable, in accordance with our Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions. That is one of the central findings in Verizon’s 2026 Data Breach Investigations Report, which analyzed more than 31,000 real-world security incidents, including more than 22,000 confirmed data breaches across 145 countries. The report found that threat actors are using generative AI across different stages of attacks, including targeting, initial access, vulnerability research, malware development and other tooling. The finding does not mean every scam is suddenly new. Verizon’s report argues that AI is, for now, mostly making familiar attacks faster, cheaper and more scalable. In the median case, threat actors researched or used AI assistance in 15 documented techniques, while some used it across 40 or 50 techniques.

From an operating standpoint, local wallets and aggregated payments performance improves fastest when ownership is explicit, metrics are shared across teams, and every weekly change has a clear success condition.