"Deepfakes are no longer confined to consumer-grade novelty or political misinformation. They are being actively weaponized against corporations and financial institutions, exploiting the high-value, high-trust environment in which treasury and finance professionals operate. These teams routinely manage large transactions, sensitive communications, and urgent decisions, making them prime targets," cautions the latest white paper Deepfakes & Payments Fraud: Is Treasury Prepared? by Strategic Treasurer, a leading treasury consulting firm. ⃰ 

This isn’t a plot from a tech-thriller. It’s the reality facing corporate treasury, finance, and payments security professionals today.

Imagine being on a video call with your CFO, someone you've worked with for years. The voice, face, tone, and gestures are all familiar. Alongside the CFO are other colleagues from the finance team whom you recognize. The CFO urgently instructs you to transfer US$25 million. Everything appears legitimate. So, you act. You authorize the payment.

Only later do you discover: you were the only real person on that call. The CFO and the rest of the team were digitally generated fakes. You’ve been deepfaked, and millions have vanished with a single mistaken payment authorization.

From hypothetical to operational: A surging payments security threat

Your treasury function’s greatest asset—trust—is becoming its biggest liability.

In an alarming case reported by the South China Morning Post in February 2024, a finance executive at a multinational company’s Hong Kong office was duped into transferring about $25.6 million to criminals after attending a video conference call filled with deepfaked (digitally re-created) “company executives,” including their London-based CFO. What seemed authentic was a sophisticated illusion—crafted with AI, rendered with uncanny precision, and executed with consummate ease.

This is not an isolated case. Financial losses from deepfake-enabled fraud surpassed $200 million in the first quarter of 2025, as per Resemble AI’s Q1 2025 Deepfake Incident Report.

Fueling this surge in deepfake scams is “The proliferation of free, open-source tools that enable criminals to fabricate hyper-realistic content. Technologies such as voice cloning, face-swapping, image-to-video conversion, and automated lip-syncing have dramatically lowered the barrier to entry. The result is a fraud landscape where deepfakes are cheaper, more scalable, and more difficult to detect than ever before”, warns Strategic Treasurer’s white paper.

The barrier to entry is no longer technical—it's virtually nonexistent. And as generative AI continues to advance at breakneck speed, even seasoned corporate treasury, finance, and payments security professionals may struggle to distinguish between what’s genuine and what’s forged.

For treasurers and finance chiefs, the implications of this accelerating deepfake trend are not abstract; they are immense. This is no longer a distant concern —it’s a camouflaged threat, already embedded in the shadows and seeping into overlooked corners of treasury and finance operations. A covert army of threat actors is silently injecting deepfake content into text messages, video calls, and audio interactions—hiding in plain sight. And most won’t spot it until it’s too late.

Why treasury teams are especially vulnerable

Treasury teams operate in high-pressure environments with compressed timelines, large capital movements, confidential information, critical deadlines, and trust-based workflows. Add remote work, video calls, and digital communications, and you have a perfect storm. Deepfakes now mimic not just how executives look and sound, but also how they think and interact — using shared project references, insider language, and familiar tone.

What’s more concerning is how easily these digital clones can be created. Publicly available audio or video—from conference presentations, media interviews, webinars, podcasts, or earnings calls—can be used to generate deepfakes. You don’t need to be a high-profile treasurer or senior treasury executive to be targeted or fall victim to deepfake-related crime. If you’re responsible for handling high-value financial transactions, you are already a potential target.

This risk is further amplified in today’s distributed, remote, and hybrid work settings. Treasury professionals frequently interact with colleagues, vendors, and business partners across geographies and time zones, relying upon digital platforms—email, messaging apps, and video conferencing—to carry out their responsibilities. In a digital-first world, verifying even brief, seemingly authentic online communications has become more difficult—making it easier for deepfake-driven deception to bypass human and procedural safeguards.

Together, these factors signal the rise of an invisible adversary in the treasury landscape—an under-recognized threat to payments security. As highly adept malicious actors leverage AI-powered tools to accelerate deepfake creation, and pursue larger financial gains than ever before, combating this silent saboteur—one that wears a high-tech mask and operates with surgical precision—becomes a significant challenge for treasury, finance, and payments security executives.

In this context, even a single payment request that appears and feels authentic can bring an organization to its knees. And with iProov’s February 2025 research revealing that 99.9% of people cannot “consistently” identify AI-generated fakes, the human firewall is cracking.

In this evolving threat environment, the question is no longer if deepfakes will target your organization, but when—and how prepared you are to recognize and respond to the key risks they pose to your company.

Reputational, psychological, and operational fallout

The impact of deepfake fraud extends well beyond financial loss. Criminals are deploying deepfakes to harass, humiliate, or discredit business executives and their companies. These tactics place organizational reputation and leadership credibility at considerable risk. Such deception can undermine corporate credibility, erode customer and investor trust, and negatively impact sales, partnerships, and stock prices.

For executives targeted by deepfake attacks, the experience can be emotionally distressing and psychologically traumatic—particularly if the deepfake goes viral. The aftermath often involves intensive investigations and crisis management, which not only drain organizational resources but can also take a heavy psychological toll on the victim. Affected executives may experience anxiety, guilt, shame, and reduced self-esteem—factors that can lead to underperformance, damaged career prospects, or even resignation.

Financial fraud involving deepfakes can also expose organizations to intense regulatory scrutiny and legal consequences. Adding to the risk is the cross-border nature or international scope of many deepfake incidents, which makes mitigation efforts and legal resolution across jurisdictions significantly more difficult.

As deepfake threats become more disruptive and pervasive, our vigilance and defenses must rise in equal measure. These engineered deceptions are actively undermining business operations, payments security, and damaging reputations. CEOs, CFOs, treasury, and payments professionals must act with foresight, resolve, and urgency.

While detection technology is advancing rapidly, defense must begin with people, policies, and processes.

As Craig Jeffery, Managing Partner at Strategic Treasurer, aptly states: “The investment in people, structure, processes, and validation services must increase for all companies to avoid the time-consuming and costly explanations of why this deepfake led to this or that loss.”

In this regard, Strategic Treasurer’s deepfake white paper recommends layered security measures to strengthen defenses against deepfakes. These are core safeguards treasury and finance teams must adopt to counter this evolving threat.

To summarize, the intensifying risk of deepfake technology makes it uniquely perilous in high-trust treasury, finance, and payments operations. Because deepfakes are tailored to be precise, persuasive, and personal, even a single lapse in detection can trigger a cascade of costly risks.

Strategic Treasurer’s new white paper "Deepfakes & Payments Fraud: Is Treasury Prepared?", is a wake-up call and a must-read resource for treasury leaders and their teams, CFOs, and payments professionals. It will help you prepare, adapt, and stay ahead of digital deception—arming you with the insights needed to recognize and resist this invisible threat before it strikes your organization.

Download the white paper today, and listen to the special episode of the OpenTreasury Podcast where we unpack one of the most pressing and fast-evolving threats facing the treasury, finance, and payments security landscape: deepfake-enabled fraud.  Read and listen—before the next urgent payments request lands in your inbox. These twin resources—white paper and podcast—may be what save you from being deepfaked.

 

⃰ Disclosure: Strategic Treasurer owns CTMfile.