The U.K.’s growing panic about the spread of coronavirus has created an open season for fraudsters, with government agencies and cybersecurity companies reporting unprecedented levels of criminal activity since the virus began sweeping across the globe in January.

The industry still grapples with stopping corrupt employees — the failure of CBS Employee FCU last year highlights that — and now that could become even harder with the pandemic.

New features and improvements often take a back seat to security, says Entersekt's Claudius van der Meulen.

Card fraud risks — already soaring prior to the coronavirus outbreak — are changing rapidly as the pandemic deepens, forcing issuers and merchants to rethink protective measures.

Address verification, geolocation and 3-D secure can all play a role, according to Chargebacks 911 and Global Risk Technologies' Monica Eaton-Cardone.

Digital payment firms and fintechs are nimble and responsive, but that also creates web supply chain attack risk, says Jscrambler's Rui Ribeiro.

While financial institutions are encouraging customers to use their digital banking services rather than the branch or ATMs during the outbreak, attackers will also be looking to exploit this potential increased adoption of mobile banking and mobile payment apps, says OneSpan's Sam Bakken.

As coronavirus forces most shopping to occur online, merchants will likely see their product return policies tested by both good customers and the unsavory ones who abuse those policies for profit.

The COVID-19 pandemic has already given rise to false marketing of test kits and criminals impersonating the FDIC. Consumer advocates say the bureau could issue alerts as well as empower banks to help safeguard their customers’ funds.

While the global coronavirus outbreak may be grounding corporate travel to a near standstill, leading travel companies and fintechs are continuing to hone AI-based payments platforms to reduce the problem of corporate travel fraud.