Fraud losses in the United States have been rising sharply. In 2024, the FTC’s Consumer Sentinel database recorded 2.6 million fraud reports, with consumers reporting losses of $12.5 billion – a 25 percent increase from 2023. That number alone is staggering, but it only captures what gets reported. Many victims never come forward at all.
The common thread running through nearly every major scam is the payment method. Scammers steer people toward cash, gold, gift cards, wire transfers, and cryptocurrency because those are hard to reverse. Once the money moves, it’s usually gone. This is not accidental. Scammers choose these methods deliberately, knowing that the window to recover funds closes almost instantly. Here’s a clear look at the five most exploited payment types and why they work so well for criminals.
1. Gift Cards: The Number One Tool for Imposter Scams
According to the FTC, Americans filed more than 41,000 fraud reports tied to gift card and prepaid card scams in 2024, totaling $212 million in losses. The scale is hard to fully absorb, but it reflects how normalized this tactic has become across dozens of scam types.
A gift card balance has no owner, no account, and no paper trail. Once a scammer has the number and PIN for a gift card, it’s game over – they can drain the balance easily without ever revealing who or where they are.
Victims lost an average of more than $5,150 per incident in 2024 through gift card scams. When people report paying a fraudster with a gift or reload card, about four times out of five, the fraud they describe is an imposter scam. Callers pretending to be the IRS, Social Security, or even a grandchild in trouble routinely demand specific card brands by name.
2. Wire Transfers: Fast, Final, and Almost Never Recoverable
US consumers reported losing $2 billion to bank transfer and payment scams in 2024, according to the FTC Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book. Bank transfers are the preferred payment method for scammers because they are fast, difficult to reverse, and frequently cross borders before anyone notices something is wrong.
Once a wire transfer is completed, it can rarely be canceled or refunded. This is because wire transfers involve moving funds from one bank account to another without intermediaries. There’s no cooling-off period, and there’s no central authority to call and ask for a reversal.
In 2024, consumers reported losing more money to scams where they paid with bank transfers or cryptocurrency than all other payment methods combined. That figure, confirmed directly by the FTC, tells you everything about which payment channels criminals trust most.
3. Cryptocurrency: Irreversible by Design
Increasingly, criminals are seeking payments in cryptocurrency because transactions do not pass through a bank or other institution that might otherwise flag and stop suspicious activity. Like wire transfers, cryptocurrency transfers cannot be reversed once the funds have been transferred.
In 2024, the FTC received nearly 47,000 reports of cryptocurrency fraud, costing over $1.4 billion – an average of more than $34,000 per incident. That per-victim loss figure is by far the highest of any payment method, which reflects how high-stakes these schemes tend to be.
Transfers are borderless, typically irreversible, and control depends on possession of private keys rather than accounts held by a single intermediary. Criminals use cryptocurrencies because they make certain offenses easier than traditional methods, including the ability to move funds quickly across borders and take payment without going through banks. Investment fraud and romance-based “pig butchering” schemes rely heavily on this structure.
4. Cryptocurrency ATMs and Kiosks: The Fastest-Growing Fraud Channel
The FBI recorded roughly 11,000 complaints tied to crypto kiosks in 2024, totaling approximately $247 million in reported losses – a 99 percent increase from the prior year, meaning the problem essentially doubled in twelve months. The trajectory only continued upward from there.
IC3 received more than 13,400 reports involving the use of cryptocurrency kiosks in 2025, with losses exceeding $388 million – a 23 percent increase in complaints and a 58 percent jump in losses from 2024.
The playbook is grimly consistent: a scammer contacts a victim, typically impersonating a government agency, tech support, or a romantic interest, and instructs them to withdraw cash and deposit it into a crypto ATM. The funds convert to cryptocurrency and transfer to the scammer’s wallet instantly. No chargebacks, no reversals, no recourse. More than half of all complaints in 2025 were filed by individuals over the age of 50, with losses exceeding $302 million.
5. Peer-to-Peer Payment Apps: Convenient for Everyone, Including Fraudsters
In 2024, the FTC received over 25,000 complaints from consumers who lost approximately $113 million to criminals using peer-to-peer payment apps, with an average loss of nearly $4,500 per incident. Apps built for splitting a dinner bill are now routine tools in scammers’ arsenals.
The core problem is one of speed. P2P platforms like Venmo, Zelle, and Cash App move money almost instantly. Once a payment lands in a recipient’s account, platforms generally treat the transaction as complete and authorized by the sender. That makes disputes difficult and recoveries rare.
Payments may be untraceable and irreversible, making it difficult for law enforcement to prosecute crimes and for victims to recover their money. Scammers exploit this by creating false urgency, telling victims a payment must happen immediately to avoid a penalty, resolve a problem, or help a loved one. By the time the victim realizes what happened, the money has already been withdrawn or moved elsewhere.
Why These Five Methods Keep Winning for Criminals
The logic behind each of these payment types is the same. Scammers need a method that cannot be recalled, disputes cannot easily undo, and law enforcement cannot quickly trace. Con artists favor these payment channels because they can get quick cash, the transaction is largely irreversible, and they can remain anonymous.
Increasingly, criminals are seeking payments in cryptocurrency because transactions do not pass through a bank or other institution that might otherwise flag suspicious activity before the transfer happens. Gift cards and wire transfers serve the same purpose in lower-tech schemes. The common thread is that the money moves before anyone can intervene.
In 2025, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center received over one million complaints with reported losses reaching nearly $20.9 billion – 26 percent more than in 2024. The upward trend shows no sign of plateauing. The tactics evolve, the scripts get more convincing, but the payment methods stay mostly the same.
Who Gets Targeted Most Often
Over half of all fraud reports in 2024 were from adults aged 50 and older, who reported $3.4 billion in losses. Older adults are disproportionately targeted, though younger adults are not immune. Younger age groups filed more fraud reports, but older age groups reported losing the most money.
Older adults accounted for 68 percent of aggregate reported losses in 2024 and were nearly twice as likely as younger adults to report a six-figure fraud loss. These reports were often linked to investment scams, romance scams, and impersonators posing as well-known agencies or companies.
What Happens When Victims Try to Recover Their Money
The FBI’s Financial Fraud Kill Chain works with banks to freeze fraudulent transfers. In 2025, it handled 3,900 incidents involving $1.16 billion in attempted theft and froze $679 million. That’s meaningful, but it represents a fraction of the total losses reported.
For gift card payments and crypto transfers, recovery rates are considerably lower. Once cash is converted to cryptocurrency and sent, recovery is rare, with funds often disappearing into overseas exchanges or wallets beyond U.S. jurisdiction. Gift card balances, once redeemed, leave virtually no path to recovery.
Recovery scams are themselves a significant danger, costing Americans $1.4 billion in 2025. Fraudsters sometimes circle back to the same victims, offering to recover lost funds for an upfront fee, which of course never materializes.
How to Recognize a Scam Before You Pay
The single clearest warning sign is a specific payment demand. Scammers demand payment through gift cards, cryptocurrency, or wire transfers to “resolve” a supposed problem. No legitimate government agency, utility company, or tech support provider will ask you to settle a debt with a Google Play card or a crypto ATM deposit.
Whether it’s an email, a phone call, or a text, scammers try to create a sense of urgency. Asking for payment through wire transfers, gift cards, or prepaid debit cards is an immediate red flag, because those payment methods are nearly untraceable once the money is sent.
Funding purchases with a credit card offers the most legal protections, including the right to a chargeback if there is a problem with the order. When a stranger specifically steers you away from a credit card toward an untraceable alternative, treat that as a deliberate tactic, not a coincidence.
What Regulators Are Doing About It
In August 2025, FinCEN issued a public alert reminding banks that crypto-kiosk operators are treated as money services businesses under Bank Secrecy Act rules, requiring registration, anti-money-laundering programs, and suspicious activity reporting when fraud indicators appear.
Nearly a dozen states have passed new laws putting new anti-fraud restrictions on crypto ATMs. Some of these laws cap daily transaction limits or require kiosk operators to display prominent fraud warnings. The regulatory landscape is shifting, though enforcement remains uneven across different states.
In 2025, the FTC received over one million reports about imposter frauds with consumers reporting over $3.5 billion in losses, while investment scams generated over $7.9 billion in losses with an average individual loss of over $10,000. Pressure on regulators to act is intensifying as those numbers climb year over year.
The Takeaway
Scammers don’t invent elaborate schemes and then figure out how to collect payment. They start with the payment method. Everything else – the fake emergency, the impersonated official, the manufactured deadline – exists to get money moving through a channel that cannot be called back.
Understanding why these five methods are preferred is genuinely useful. A caller who demands a wire transfer, insists on gift cards, or directs you to a crypto kiosk is not navigating bureaucracy. They are choosing a one-way door on purpose. Recognizing that pattern early is one of the most effective defenses available, because once the money moves, the options narrow very quickly.
AI Disclaimer: This article was created with the assistance of AI tools and reviewed by a human editor.