Welcome back to Fraudology.

I’ve now had a few days to recover from the inaugural Merchant Fraud Alliance conference in Chicago. I helped create this event. Watching two days of conversation among merchants go from a plan to a room full of people was a real highlight for me.

The Merchant Fraud Alliance 2026 conference was built around a gap I had heard about for years. Merchants wanted a place to compare notes with peers without feeling like the target of a sales pitch. We kept the ratio at roughly three merchants for every solution provider, invited sponsors based on what their customers say about them, and added merchant only deep dives. I explain why we made those choices, then walk through the AI bootcamp, the deep dives, and the main stage sessions. Topics include fraud as a service, app cloning, account takeover trends, executive scorecards, build versus buy decisions, and the PSP gaps merchants keep running into.

This episode is for everyone who couldn’t be there. Two days of sessions won’t fit into one episode. I’m sharing the moments that stuck with me the most.

What you’ll hear in this episode:

• Why we built the Merchant Fraud Alliance as a merchant first fraud practitioner event, and how invite only sponsorship shaped the room
• How the merchant only deep dives worked, including a fraud center of excellence discussion, a refund fraud ecommerce session for food delivery and retailers, and war room roundtables for retailers and marketplaces
• What came out of the AI fraud bootcamp for merchants, from Slack alerts and chargeback research to governance questions and the rising cost of AI tokens
• Why a fraud as a service session encouraged attendees to treat fraud threat intelligence from Telegram, Discord, and the dark web as an input to decisions at the time of purchase
• What one vendor’s data showed about app clone fraud detection, with chargebacks running roughly four times higher when cloned apps were involved
• Ecommerce fraud trends 2026, including a threefold rise in account takeover over two quarters and agent traffic that one vendor found to be nine times riskier than human traffic
• Why fraud now moves upstream and downstream of the payment, and the merchant PSP fraud gaps that appear when you rely only on processor tools
• Lessons in cross functional fraud collaboration, and how to build a fraud executive scorecard with metrics your executives actually want
• A look at the build vs buy fraud stack panel, a non payment fraud discussion covering loyalty fraud and promo abuse, and research on how cyber signals can improve payment fraud decisions

You should listen to this episode if you:

• Couldn’t attend and want a practical summary of the sessions and the ideas that came out of them
• Are curious what a merchant only fraud conference looks like and whether it’s worth attending next year
• Are exploring generative AI in fraud operations and want to hear what other merchants are doing, and what they’re struggling with
• Struggle to explain fraud to executives and need a better way to present your data
• Are weighing a build or buy decision, or feel limited by the fraud tools your PSP provides
• Deal with refund abuse, promo abuse, or loyalty fraud and want to compare notes with peers