It’s a scenario most people have encountered: you try to make a big or unexpected purchase on your credit card, and, at the moment you need it the most, the card gets declined.
Sometimes, it’s as simple as confirming the purchase via text message, and you can quickly complete the transaction. Other times, it’s a days-long process that involves confirmation codes, mailed letters and waiting on hold with the card company to validate that it was indeed you who wanted to buy the product.
The rate of fraud alerts is “absolutely” going up, according to Deloitte U.S. risk & financial advisory principal Satish Lalchand.
It can’t be ignored, because many of the alerts are not false alarms.
About 60% of credit card holders in 2023 experienced some sort of attempted fraud, according to Experian.
“Fraud in general across all channels, whether it’s check fraud, credit card fraud payments, the peer-to-peer payments, everything, is significantly increasing at a very rapid pace,” Lalchand said.
Global card losses attributed to fraud reached $33 billion in 2022, according to payments industry research company Nilson Report, with the U.S. market representing roughly 40% of losses. It has forecast a persistent threat that could reach nearly $400 billion in card fraud in the decade to 2032.
“What’s driving a lot of this type of fraud, is the fraudsters themselves are using AI in general,” Lalchand said. “So, they are able to now move much faster.”
In the past, cybercriminals could open five to ten accounts a day. Now, it’s hundreds, if not thousands of accounts, thanks to advancements in artificial intelligence.
But at the same time AI is helping to detect potentially problematic transactions, with the downside of many cases turning out to be false alarms.
“When we come down to credit cards, financial institutions are investing more in the concept of fraud and fraud modernization, replacing older technology and having better fraud detection capabilities, and retuning their alerts,” Lalchand said. “That’s also causing a lot more on the detection side to go up.”
More personal data is being stolen
Michael Bruemmer, Experian vice president and head of its global data breach resolution and consumer protection division, says a lot more fraud is being done in other ways than stealing your credit card number, using other portions of your financial background, identity background, social security number.
Just in the past five months, there have been four major data breaches including Ticketmaster, Change Healthcare, AT&T and National Public Data. More data breaches can lead to more scrutiny and more preemptive alert protocols, although they are often not the main reason for alerts, according to Experian.
There is some good news. Overall, the rate of false purchases on credit cards is actually decreasing, according to Experian. There have been 416,582 cases of credit card fraud that have been perpetrated in 2024. It’s down 5.4% versus 2023.
AI’s ability to detect patterns based on previous behavior has helped. While you may still get credit card blocks on purchases that seem out of the ordinary, technology has improved fraud alerts in other ways. MasterCard said it’s observed on average a 20% increase in its ability to detect fraud thanks to AI, and up to 300% increase in its ability to detect fraud without more false alerts. Mastercard declined to provide statistics on the absolute level of fraud and overall accuracy of fraud detection.
“We’ve come such a long way to actually reduce the friction out there,” said Johan Gerber, Mastercard executive vice president and head of security solutions.
Take for example, travel plans and making purchases in a foreign country. Before, people would have to call the credit card company. Now, card companies automatically note vacations and travel patterns based on past purchase behavior. Technology has also made it faster to identify and clear flagged fraud alerts if it is indeed a false alarm. Instead of having to call and wait on hold, in many cases verification can be done in a matter of minutes through authorized related accounts or through information only the individual cardholder would know.
Tips to cut down on unnecessary alerts
Today, some scenarios will raise concerns within current security parameters. Experian notes that while data breaches may turn up the dial on fraud alerts, it’s actually changes in shopping patterns that are guaranteed to set off red flags. If you’re buying something at a new store or purchasing a big ticket item that you don’t usually buy, that’s typically something that will be noted. MasterCard also said trying multiple transactions quickly in a row will always alert their systems. So, you can expect these will usually garner some sort of temporary block.
“It’s a balance,” Gerber said. “Do I want to be inconvenienced? Do you potentially want a transaction that [MasterCard] may get wrong because [we] declined you? Or do I want to sit on the other side of the loss of trust in that [we] actually did let a transaction through and you should have known it’s not me.”
Other things you can do to ensure that you get mostly accurate fraud alerts is to sign up for monitoring services and personally set limit alerts on your accounts. Most institutions will let you place monetary limits on when you can get notified about big transactions. Freezing your credit file, using a password manager and using two-factor authentication for your financial accounts with a biometric passcode can also be beneficial.
“Try to shop on regular, reputable shopping sites, and if you’re going to use a credit card, have a low-level limit credit card that’s only used for those shopping sites,” Bruemmer said. “I would also recommend using a tap-to-pay or a mobile app and then make sure you’re not shopping on a public Wi-Fi network.”
And, even if the alerts may be annoying, never ignore them. Even though it may seem like you get notice of a data breach every day, it doesn’t mean you won’t eventually be affected.
“Consumers should pay attention to all of this, because it’s just a matter of time … they will be impacted,” Lachland said.
Elon Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., during a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Cyril Ramaphosa, South Africa’s president, not pictured, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, May 21, 2025.
Jim Lo Scalzo | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Tesla shares have dropped 7% from Friday’s closing price of $323.63to the $300.71 close on Tuesday ahead of the company’s second-quarter deliveries report.
Wall Street analysts are expecting Tesla to report deliveries of around 387,000 — a 13% decline compared to deliveries of nearly 444,000 a year ago, according to a consensus compiled by FactSet. Prediction market Kalshi told CNBC on Tuesday that its traders forecast deliveries of around 364,000.
Shares in the electric vehicle maker had been rising after Tesla started a limited robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, in late June and CEO Elon Musk boasted of its first “driverless delivery” of a car to a customer there.
The stock price took a turn after Musk on Saturday reignited a feud with President Donald Trump over the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the massive spending bill that the commander-in-chief endorsed. The bill is now heading for a final vote in the House.
That legislation would benefit higher-income households in the U.S. while slashing spending on programs such as Medicaid and food assistance.
Musk did not object to cuts to those specific programs. However, Musk on X said the bill would worsen the U.S. deficit and raise the debt ceiling. The bill includes tax cuts that would add around $3 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office.
The Tesla CEO has also criticized aspects of the bill that would cut hundreds of billions of dollars in support for renewable energy development in the U.S. and phase out tax credits for electric vehicles.
Such changes could hurt Tesla as they are expected to lower EV sales by roughly 100,000 vehicles per year by 2035, according to think tank Energy Innovation.
The bill is also expected to reduce renewable energy development by more than 350 cumulative gigawatts in that same time period, according to Energy Innovation. That could pressure Tesla’s Energy division, which sells solar and battery energy storage systems to utilities and other clean energy project developers.
Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday that Musk was, “upset that he’s losing his EV mandate,” but that the tech CEO could “lose a lot more than that.” Trump was alluding to the subsidies, incentives and contracts that Musk’s many businesses have relied on.
SpaceX has received over $22 billion from work with the federal government since 2008, according to FedScout, which does federal spending and government contract research. That includes contracts from NASA, the U.S. Air Force and Space Force, among others.
Tesla has reported $11.8 billion in sales of “automotive regulatory credits,” or environmental credits, since 2015, according to an evaluation of the EV maker’s financial filings by Geoff Orazem, CEO of FedScout.
These incentives are largely derived from federal and state regulations in the U.S. that require automakers to sell some number of low-emission vehicles or buy credits from companies like Tesla, which often have an excess.
Regulatory credit sales go straight to Tesla’s bottom line. Credit revenue amounted to approximately 60% of Tesla’s net income in the second quarter of 2024.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos leaves Aman Venice hotel, on the second day of the wedding festivities of Bezos and journalist Lauren Sanchez, in Venice, Italy, June 27, 2025.
Yara Nardi | Reuters
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos unloaded more than 3.3 million shares of his company in a sale valued at roughly $736.7 million, according to a financial filing on Tuesday.
The stock sale is part of a previously arranged trading plan adopted by Bezos in March. Under that arrangement, Bezos plans to sell up to 25 million shares of Amazon over a period ending May 29, 2026.
Bezos, who stepped down as Amazon’s CEO in 2021 but remains chairman, has been selling stock in the company at a regular clip in recent years, though he’s still the largest individual shareholder. He adopted a similar trading plan in February 2024 to sell up to 50 million shares of Amazon stock through late January of this year.
Bezos previously said he’d sell about $1 billion in Amazon stock each year to fund his space exploration company, Blue Origin. He’s also donated shares to Day 1 Academies, his nonprofit that’s building a chain of Montessori-inspired preschools across several states.
The most recent stock sale comes after Bezos and Lauren Sanchez tied the knot last week in a lavish wedding in Venice. The star-studded celebration, which took place over three days and sparked protests from some local residents, was estimated to cost around $50 million.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai addresses the crowd during Google’s annual I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California on May 20, 2025.
Camille Cohen | AFP | Getty Images
The Google Doodle is Alphabet’s most valuable piece of real estate, and on Tuesday, the company used that space to promote “AI Mode,” its latest AI search product.
Google’s Chrome browser landing pages and Google’s home page featured an animated image that, when clicked, leads users to AI Mode, the company’s latest search product. The doodle image also includes a share button.
The promotion of AI Mode on the Google Doodle comes as the tech company makes efforts to expose more users to its latest AI features amid pressure from artificial intelligence startups. That includes OpenAI which makes ChatGPT, Anthropic which makes Claude and Perplexity AI, which bills itself as an “AI-powered answer engine.”
Google’s “Doodle” Tuesday directed users to its search chatbot-like experience “AI Mode”
AI Mode is Google’s chatbot-like experience for complex user questions. The company began displaying AI Mode alongside its search results page in March.
“Search whatever’s on your mind and get AI-powered responses,” the product description reads when clicked from the home page.
AI Mode is powered by Google’s flagship AI model Gemini, and the tool has rolled out to more U.S. users since its launch. Users can ask AI Mode questions using text, voice or images. Google says AI Mode makes it easier to find answers to complex questions that might have previously required multiple searches.
In May, Google tested the AI Mode feature directly beneath the Google search bar, replacing the “I’m Feeling Lucky” widget — a place where Google rarely makes changes.