By Inon, Co-Founder of Vara Security
Authorized Push Payment (APP) fraud is one of the most misunderstood problems in modern financial crime.
That may sound strange, considering how much attention it’s getting from regulators, banks, and the media, but most of the attention is focused on the wrong layer. We keep trying to stop APP fraud by improving authentication, strengthening user education, or adding more friction at the moment of payment.
From my perspective, this approach is fundamentally flawed.
APP fraud doesn’t succeed because authentication fails.It succeeds because human decision-making is hijacked.
And until we start designing defenses around human behavior, not just credentials and devices, we’ll keep losing.
In a typical APP scam, nothing is “hacked” in the traditional sense.
Yet the money still ends up in the hands of a criminal.
Why?
Because the attacker didn’t break the system.They rewired the victim’s perception of reality.
Social engineering, deepfake voice calls, impersonation of trusted authorities, and time-pressure tactics all have one thing in common:They create behavioral distortion under stress.
Traditional fraud systems aren’t built to see that.
Most banks rely on a familiar stack:
These tools are effective against account takeovers and automated fraud.They are far less effective against manipulation-driven scams.
The core reason is simple:
They measure what the user does - not how the user behaves while doing it.
A coerced user looks legitimate to a rule engine.
This is where behavioral biometrics changes the game.
Instead of asking “Is this the right user?”, behavioral biometrics asks:
These signals exist before the transaction is completed, often minutes earlier.
They’re subtle.
They’re human.
And they’re extremely hard to fake at scale.
Credentials can be stolen.
Devices can be spoofed.
Rules can be bypassed.
But human behavior, especially under manipulation - tells a story.
If we learn to read that story in real time, we can stop scams without blaming victims, breaking UX, or adding endless friction.
That’s the future we’re building toward at Vara.
And in my opinion, it’s the only future that actually works.
.png)
