Invoice fraud statistics UK 2026: what the numbers actually show
If you’ve ever wondered whether invoice fraud is really worth worrying about for a business your size, the latest figures — drawn from UK Finance’s Annual Fraud Report 2026 and the ONS’s most recent Crime Survey for England and Wales — are worth a look.
The headline figures
The Office for National Statistics’ Crime Survey for England and Wales (year ending March 2025) found that 11% of UK businesses experienced fake invoice fraud, with a further 7% hit by mandate fraud specifically — criminals persuading a business to redirect payment to an account they control. Separately, UK Finance’s Annual Fraud Report 2026 recorded £41.3 million lost specifically to invoice and mandate scams reported through the banking sector in 2025, across 2,305 cases.
Why those two numbers look so different
It’s a fair question: how can 11% of all UK businesses be affected, when banks only recorded a few thousand cases? The answer is what each figure actually measures. UK Finance’s number only counts cases reported through banks under formal fraud categories — it doesn’t capture every business that caught an attempt before money moved, decided not to report it, or experienced a version of the scam that fell outside the strict definition banks use. The ONS survey asks businesses directly about their own experience, which is why it captures a much larger picture. Read together, the two sources tell a consistent story: formally reported losses through banks are trending down, but the underlying attempt rate against ordinary businesses remains stubbornly high.
Why small and mid-sized businesses are hit hardest
Large enterprises can afford dedicated fraud teams and expensive enterprise software. Most small and mid-sized businesses can’t — which means the businesses most exposed to invoice fraud are often the ones with the least protection against it. Industries with lots of suppliers and frequent changes — construction, recruitment, and professional services among them — tend to see this most, simply because there are more invoices, more new suppliers, and more chances for something to slip through.
What this means in practice
If your business processes anywhere from 50 to 500 invoices a month and doesn’t have someone whose full-time job is checking for fraud, the odds aren’t really in your favour — not because your team isn’t careful, but because catching this reliably by eye, every single time, isn’t a realistic ask of any busy finance team. That’s the gap we built Invixa to close.
Sources: ONS, Fraud and computer misuse in England and Wales, year ending March 2025 (released March 2026). UK Finance, Annual Fraud Report 2026.