Cybercriminals are mounting a sharp escalation in mobile-targeted fraud, with security firm Kaspersky reporting a 188 percent year-on-year rise in attacks exploiting the NFC chips inside Android phones during the first four months of 2026. More than 35,600 such attacks were blocked globally in that period, compared with roughly 12,300 a year earlier, according to the company’s data. The surge forms part of a broader pattern of increasingly tailored schemes documented simultaneously by financial regulators and consumer protection agencies in Europe, North America and South America.

Investigators describe two dominant NFC techniques. In one, fraudsters posing as bank or government officials on messaging apps persuade victims to install a malicious application, then instruct them to hold their payment card against the phone and enter their PIN, transmitting the card data directly to the criminals. A more complex “reverse NFC” method tricks users into setting a rogue app as the default contactless payment tool and then depositing cash at an ATM into an account controlled by the attackers. Kaspersky’s chief security researcher, Sergey Golovanov, noted that the shift toward reverse NFC makes the fraud harder to detect because the victim physically executes the transaction.

Parallel alerts from the Americas highlight the persistence of social-engineering tactics. The US Federal Trade Commission has warned that scammers are systematically re-targeting known victims, using so-called sucker lists that record names, phone numbers, the type of fraud and the amount lost. Callers impersonating FTC agents offer to recover stolen funds, then demand fees or bank details. The Identity Theft Resource Center found that 25.6 percent of identity-crime victims in 2026 were managing two or more incidents simultaneously, while 62.1 percent of attempted identity misuse involved new account applications. In Argentina, the national social-security agency ANSES issued an urgent notice after detecting a wave of calls and WhatsApp messages in which impostors, citing fictitious bonus payments or data updates, sought to extract banking credentials and verification codes from pensioners and welfare beneficiaries.

Brazilian financial institutions are confronting a similar landscape. Digital bank Inter reported that fraud attempts in the first half of last year rose 220 percent, with criminals using artificial intelligence to clone voices and fabricate realistic contexts. The most common ruse, the “fake security centre” call, uses spoofed official phone numbers to pressure victims into installing remote-access software. The bank stressed that it never requests passwords or asks customers to make test transfers. Across all jurisdictions, authorities reiterated that no legitimate agency solicits sensitive data via unsolicited calls or messages, and that official channels remain the only safe route for transactions and inquiries. Investigations into the criminal networks behind the attacks are ongoing, with no confirmed arrests reported at this stage.