Key takeaway: Merchants and fraud teams should treat account login as the single largest fraud surface to monitor in Canada. Rising scam and authorized fraud losses matter too: they signal that fraudster-coached, user-authorized transactions are becoming as significant a loss category as stolen credentials.
Account login accounted for 42.4% of all suspected digital fraud in Canada in the first half of 2026. That was the largest share of any lifecycle stage. TransUnion reported the figure in the H2 2026 update to its Top Fraud Trends Report, released Oct. 28, 2026.
Globally, account login made up an even larger 53.0% of suspected digital fraud, the report found.
The share of Canadian account login attempts that TransUnion flagged as suspected fraud climbed 108% over four years. That period ran from the first half of 2022 to the first half of 2026. Suspected fraud in financial transaction attempts with TransUnion’s Canadian clients rose 226% over the same period.
A survey of 1,000 Canadian adults found that a fraud scheme targeted 49% of respondents in a recent three-month period. The scheme reached them by email, phone, text or online. Phishing was the most common method, cited by 47% of those targeted.
A separate survey of 200 Canadian business leaders found scam and authorized fraud was the most-cited loss source, at 34%. Synthetic identity fraud ranked second, at 17%. Forty-two percent of businesses said scam and authorized fraud increased over the past year, more than any other type.
TransUnion Senior Director of Fraud Solutions Andrew Sigfrid said fraudsters are getting better at making scams look and feel legitimate. In a separate comment, he said businesses cannot stop protecting customers once they open an account.
Why it matters: Account login has overtaken other lifecycle stages as the top fraud surface. That means merchants and processors need login-stage monitoring as much as checkout-stage controls. Scam and authorized fraud has also become businesses’ leading cited loss source. That shows fraud increasingly originates from tricking a legitimate user into authorizing a transaction, rather than from stolen credentials alone.
Source: TransUnion H2 2026 Top Fraud Trends Report release, GlobeNewswire