Thai businesses and customers rely on technology for many aspects of their daily lives and operations. This includes communication, transactions, online commerce, and data storage and exchange.

Online scams and cyber threats that can infiltrate nearly every aspect of business have emerged. Therefore, businesses must be prepared to address the impacts of scams, which extend beyond financial loss to affect important data, business continuity, and the organisation's trust and reputation.

In this article, we explain online scams and cyber threats in Thailand, including the types of scams, warning signs for businesses, and tips to prevent fraud and cyber threats. This includes advice on how to choose solutions that instantly identify suspicious activity.

Understanding fraud patterns and implementing appropriate protection systems can enable businesses to effectively manage risk and minimise losses, which can safeguard revenue and bolster business confidence.

Key takeaways

• Cyber threats can occur at many levels, from personnel and customer accounts to websites and network systems. Without appropriate security measures, they can lead to data breaches and financial losses and affect a business's image and credibility.
  
• Risk management for businesses includes awareness of online scams, which involves raising employee awareness, setting up appropriate preventive measures and systems, and choosing highly secure payment solutions.
  
• Common online scams that Thai businesses often encounter include refund or product scams, fake payment proof, identity spoofing technology, and deceptive messages sent via email or text message.
  
• Stripe Radar uses AI to detect and block fraud in real time, using data from millions of transactions and businesses worldwide. It also features 3D Secure, which adds authentication for high-risk transactions and helps detect and prevent fraud before it impacts businesses.
  

Scams and cyber threats in Thailand

The growth of e-commerce, online transactions, and digital work environments has made online scams and cyber threats unavoidable risks for businesses. Cybercrime in Thailand continues to cause widespread damage. Data from the Anti-Cyber Scam Centre (ACSC) indicates that in the first four months of 2026, over 121,000 online crime cases were reported, resulting in total financial losses exceeding ฿7.4 billion.

For businesses, cyber threats can occur at any level, including personnel, devices, customer accounts, websites, networks, cloud systems, and business data. Awareness and management of cyber risks involves a business's information technology (IT) department, and it is also a component of overall risk management. This involves raising employee awareness, implementing protection systems, managing unexpected incidents, and choosing secure payment solutions that can help reduce potential risks and damage.

Common types of online scams businesses need to know

Here are the common types of online scams that Thai businesses often encounter.

Payment fraud

This type of fraud occurs during payment, shipping, or refund requests. Here are some examples of this type of fraud:

• Credit card fraud
  Fraudulent actors steal customers' credit card information to purchase goods or services online without the cardholder's knowledge.
  
• Falsification of payment proof
  This involves falsely claiming a transfer was made by showing fake payment proof to a business to confirm the transaction. However, a transfer did not actually occur.
  
• Refund or chargeback fraud
  The customer received the product but filed a payment dispute to reclaim the funds. The customer might also claim they haven't received the product and demand a refund, even though they received the items. They might also allege product defects to secure a refund.
  
• Triangulation fraud
  Fraudulent actors set up fake stores to get money from customers. They handle payments and order products from real stores that send the items directly to the customers. Then, the fraudulent actors request refunds from the store, which causes the store to lose the products and the money.
  

Impersonation or identity fraud

This type of online scam refers to social engineering. These are attacks that target individuals within a business or organisation. Fraudulent actors impersonate trusted persons or entities to trick victims into transferring money, disclosing sensitive information, or following requests. Here are some examples of impersonation or identity fraud:

• Call centre scams
  Fraudulent actors impersonate government officials and use intimidation tactics, such as claiming tax calculation errors, issues with business registration documents, or policy violations. They use these tactics to trick victims into downloading money-draining apps.
  
• Use of identity-spoofing technology
  This is also known as "AI fraud" or "deepfake fraud". It involves fraudulent actors faking faces or voices (i.e., voice cloning) or creating virtual personas (i.e., deepfakes) to deceive victims into disclosing information or transferring money to "mule" accounts.
  
• Brand impersonation
  Fraudulent actors use the name of a store, brand, or celebrity to create fake pages and deceive customers. To prevent this, businesses must clearly display correct account names for payments and warn customers if they have been impersonated.
  
• Business email compromise
  Fraudulent actors impersonate business partners or executives or use email addresses with similar spellings to send fake invoices and trick victims into transferring money.
  

Cyberattacks

This refers to a cyber threat posed by fraudulent actors seeking to hack systems, access data, or gain unauthorised control over networks and devices. They do so to steal data or for financial gain. Here are some examples:

• Phishing
  This involves fraudulent actors sending scam messages via email, websites, fake links, or text messages to steal passwords and sensitive information.
  
• Malware
  This includes malicious software or programs created to cause damage, spy, breach and take control of systems, or steal data.
  
• Ransomware
  Ransomware encrypts data, preventing the owner from accessing files until the fraudulent actor's demanded payment is made.
  
• Distributed denial of service (DDoS)
  This type of attack involves flooding a website, storefront system, or network with a huge volume of data to cause a system crash and render it unusable during important periods. This can result in lost revenue and reputational damage for the business.
  

Marketing fraud

This involves the use of deceptive, misleading, or false marketing practices aimed at illicit business gain. It can result in increased costs, lost revenue, and inaccurate marketing data for the business. Here are some examples:

• Fake account fraud
  Fraudulent actors create fake customer accounts for illicit gain, such as repeatedly using promo codes or claiming new customer discounts.
  
• Affiliate fraud
  This involves using fake accounts or bots to artificially inflate clicks, views, sign-ups, or sales to fraudulently obtain commissions from businesses in affiliate programmes.
  
• Marketing agency fraud
  Fraudulent actors manipulate marketing campaign results – such as clicks, traffic, leads, sign-ups, downloads, or fake conversions – to obtain rewards or benefits unethically.
  

Warning signs of potential online fraud

The following are warning signs that businesses need to monitor, as they can indicate that an activity or transaction carries a fraud risk.

How businesses can prevent fraud and cyber threats

Businesses of all sizes can implement cybersecurity measures and fraud prevention strategies to protect against cyber threats.

Use automated transaction monitoring systems

Businesses managing high volumes of online transactions can implement fraud detection systems to automatically monitor transactions and identify risky behaviours. This can include unusually high-value orders, multiple transactions within a short period, and payment details inconsistent with a customer's typical behaviour patterns. Fraud detection systems enable businesses to approve, reject, or flag suspicious transactions for staff to review before shipment.

Establish clear policies for refunds and returns

A clear refund and return policy helps build customer confidence and is important for preventing fraud. Businesses need to clearly state the conditions, time frames, procedures, and required documentation for processing refunds or returns. It is also important to maintain detailed records that include orders, payment confirmations, receipts, proof of shipments, tracking numbers, and customer communication history. This serves as evidence if a chargeback or payment dispute arises.

Have authentication schedules for high-risk transactions

For high-value transactions or those with unusual behaviour, in addition to one-time password (OTP) verification, businesses can add authentication steps to ensure transactions are processed by account owners or authorised persons. These steps can include multifactor authentication (MFA), identity verification using the Know Your Customer (KYC) system, or biometrics. They are chosen according to the risk level of the transaction and the suitability of the service.

Analyse transaction data and customer behaviour

Analysing transaction data helps businesses understand typical customer behaviour and identify risky transactions more accurately. Businesses can analyse customer data, including purchase frequency, average order value, devices or channels used, and payment patterns. Then, the system can detect unusual transactions and send alerts for further review. Continuously monitoring fraud patterns enables businesses to improve their detection systems and keep pace with new types of fraud.

Use high-level technology and security standards

Fraud prevention measures are most effective when integrated into a detailed security framework including people, processes, and technology. Businesses can implement technologies such as data encryption, access control systems, MFA, and data backup solutions, in addition to systems that detect and flag unusual transactions or behaviours. It is important for businesses to adhere to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and train staff to recognise various fraud types.

Guidelines for choosing solutions that identify and prevent fraud

To improve security, businesses can adopt solutions capable of effectively detecting and preventing fraud by implementing the following measures.

Fraud detection and prevention systems

Businesses can choose solutions capable of monitoring and assessing the risk of high-volume transactions in real time. This identifies anomalies – such as unusually high payments, increased transaction frequency, and inconsistent customer data – while also issuing alerts and implementing additional identity verification steps or security measures based on risk level. This helps mitigate losses from fraudulent transactions without adding unnecessary steps for other customers.

Stripe Radar uses AI to detect and block fraud in real time. It uses data from millions of transactions and businesses worldwide and a 3D Secure system that automatically adds authentication for high-risk transactions. This helps detect and prevent fraud before it impacts businesses.

Highly secure payment solutions

Payment systems are one of the main targets for fraudulent actors. Businesses can choose payment solutions that adhere to high security standards and feature tools for identifying and mitigating fraud risks. These solutions also enable the consolidation and monitoring of transaction data from multiple channels into a single hub, which allows businesses to accurately and promptly detect risky behaviours or transactions.

Stripe Payments enables businesses to accept a variety of payment methods and manage transactions via a single system. Built on a payment infrastructure designed with a focus on security and high-level financial data protection, it helps mitigate the risk of unwanted transactions. It can also reduce the burden of managing security measures, while delivering a secure and simple payment experience for customers.

Checkout pages that enhance security

Businesses need to prioritise security and the customer experience during the payment process. It is important to personalise the process based on usage patterns and eliminate unnecessary steps, as excessive verification requirements can lead to cart abandonment. In addition, insufficient security measures can increase online fraud risks.

Businesses can use Stripe Checkout, which enables the creation of checkout pages via a secure and simplified payment process that is backed by Stripe's industry-leading security features. Choosing the right checkout page solution can mitigate financial risk, reduce friction in the payment process, and directly support opportunities to increase conversions.

Integration with other management systems

The ability to securely integrate with other management systems – such as inventory management, customer data analytics, customer relationship management (CRM), APIs, plugins, and various add-on applications – enables businesses to update and verify data consistency across systems in real time. This is important for managing data on orders, payments, and customer behaviour from multiple sources. This is important for risk analysis, detection of anomalous transactions, and detection of suspicious activities.

Data analysis systems with continuous learning capabilities

Key security features include in-depth data analysis and continuous learning from new fraud patterns to identify trends and detect accounts or behaviours that can pose risks. Even though cyber threats and fraud constantly change, analytics systems can assess risk levels and flag suspicious transactions before damage occurs. They can also adjust strategies and preventive measures to deal with new types of threats, which helps customers stay informed and helps businesses handle risks.

How Stripe Radar can help

Stripe Radar helps detect fraud and unlock growth, using AI trained on data from Stripe's global network. Radar helps protect your business from fraud throughout the customer lifecycle before it affects your bottom line, while helping you approve more legitimate customers and payments.

Radar can help your business:

• Prevent fraud losses: Radar's AI learns from more than US$1.9 trillion in annual transactions across Stripe's global network, helping it identify and block fraud patterns that individual businesses might not catch on their own.

• Unify protection across evolving fraud attacks: Radar brings protection against transaction fraud, account fraud, and customer abuse all into one solution, so you gain unified protection across major fraud types.

• Adapt as fraud evolves: Radar continuously adapts to changing fraud patterns, from first-party abuse to agentic transactions, helping protect your business against emerging threats.

• Work with your existing tech stack: Use Radar with Stripe payments with no integration required, or access Radar's intelligence through programmable APIs, whether you process payments on Stripe or not.

Learn more about Stripe Radar or get started today.

FAQs about online scams and prevention methods