Accounts payable fraud for trades businesses

A growing trades business can be paying dozens of suppliers a week — merchants, plant hire, subcontractors, and specialist trades — while the finance function is often one or two people, or the owner. Invoices arrive by email from many sources, bank details vary, and payments are made quickly to keep jobs moving. Fraudsters rely on that combination of volume, variety, and speed.

• Electrical, plumbing & heating: frequent wholesaler and materials invoices where a changed bank detail can hide among routine orders.
• Roofing & groundworks: high-value materials and plant hire payments that are attractive single targets.
• Fit-out & refurbishment: many subcontractors and one-off suppliers, so unknown payees are common and harder to spot.
• All trades: plant hire and materials merchants paid on account, where duplicate or altered invoices can slip through.

• Bank-detail change requests impersonating a supplier you use regularly.
• First-time payee invoices with urgent payment demands.
• Lookalike domains that copy a merchant or subcontractor.
• Duplicate invoice references submitted for a second payment.
• Fraudulent details hidden inside PDF attachments.

Even a small team can hold the line with a few consistent habits:

• Verify each key supplier once — sort code, account number, trusted phone — and keep it on file.
• Confirm any bank-detail change by phone on a number you already hold, never from the email.
• Flag first-time payees for an extra check before the first payment.
• Have a second person approve high-value payments.
• Keep a simple record of who checked and approved each payment.

The bank detail change scam guide covers the highest-risk case in more detail.

Fiducio is designed for lean finance teams. It watches the accounts payable mailboxes you connect, checks every invoice and payment request against your verified supplier baseline, and only interrupts you when something genuinely looks wrong — a changed bank detail, an unknown payee, impersonation, or a duplicate. That means protection without adding a heavy manual process. See how Fiducio works.