Sharing Information is Key to Fighting Fraud

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If misery truly loves company that's almost certainly a given when it comes to fraud. If your organization has been victimized, odds are you're not alone. And while sharing that information to help others is crucial, it's also not that easy.

"If we can share information in a smart, federated way, then we can strengthen our network," said Charles Ellert, Nacha Associate Managing Director, ACH Network Development. "What's this about at the end of the day? It's about protecting our customers, protecting our users in the payment system, and also to reduce fraud."

All worthwhile goals, so what's holding things up? Many times, organizations are concerned about what they can discuss. Financial institutions generally can't share specifics about customers and account transactions outside of strict parameters; instead, they're limited to sharing general "typology" information.

"Some of the misconceptions are around privacy, confidential business information. It's where it's important to know what can you and can't you share," said attorney Matthew Luzadder, Managing Partner Chicago Office, Kelley Drye & Warren LLP. "Your company is going to have some policies around that, they can give you some guidance on it. When in doubt you can ask your legal counsel on it. But as a general matter, you can talk about general fraud typologies that you're seeing in the market in general. You can share some of the knowledge you've built up on that."

Luzadder and Ellert were on Nacha's Payments SmartCast podcast, and will also be among the panelists at the Smarter Faster Payments 2026 session "Decentralized, Not Disconnected: Sharing Fraud Intelligence," taking place April 27 at 2:30 p.m.

"Fraudsters move fast," said Ellert, meaning time is of the essence when it comes to sharing what you're seeing.

"With faster payments the window to act gets increasingly smaller, so if intelligence isn't shared quickly, and in a digestible way, businesses are going to lose the chance to intervene and protect their customers," said Ellert.

Luzadder agreed, noting that no one should think they're operating in a silo today.

"We're beyond our own four walls right now. This is all interconnected," said Luzadder. "And we're not doing anyone any favors if we're not sharing the information that we've gained through our experience-even if it's a bad experience, and something happened, we should be able to share," he said. Again, within the parameters of typology information-and not specifics-Luzadder said businesses should be able to say to one another, "'Look, here's what occurred. Here's some possible ways that this could have been mitigated. Here's some new typology that we just saw a few days ago. Be prepared, this could hit you.'"

Much more was discussed, and you can listen to the complete podcast below.

For details on Smarter Faster Payments 2026, visit the conference website.