From Friction to Intelligence: How Europe Is Reinventing Fraud Prevention
On June 10th, 2026, Nexus Luxembourg brought together several experts for an insightful conversation on one of the finance industry’s defining tensions: keeping payments instant and seamless while building meaningful defenses against fraud. Claude Meurisse, CEO of LUXHUB, participated in a panel discussion on Intelligent Fraud Prevention for Frictionless and Safe Payments, along with Claire Alexandre (PayPal), Alain Hirtzig (POST Luxembourg), Pierre Grasset (LuxTrust) and Ananda Kautz (ABBL).
“Smart Friction” Over More Friction
When asked how the industry can strengthen fraud prevention without burdening legitimate payments, Claude Meurisse didn’t call for less friction, he called for smarter friction.
“We’re not necessarily moving to more friction, but to ‘smart friction.’ Verification of Payee is a good example, it happens before a payment is being authorized, it doesn’t break the payment flow, and it delivers useful information to the end user performing the payment.”
It’s a meaningful distinction. Rather than forcing users through unnecessary hoops, smart friction intervenes precisely at the moment it matters most and only then.
Claude Meurisse also shared a telling real-world example: that very morning, his bank had placed a credit transfer on hold and reached out with a few targeted questions before releasing it. It was the first time the company had sent money to that particular IBAN, a newly incorporated company in southern Europe, and the bank flagged it accordingly.
“I don’t receive those messages every week. That’s exactly the point. When it happens, it builds trust. The customer knows the bank’s transaction monitoring is working.”
A European Infrastructure for Fraud Intelligence
On what needs to change at a structural level, the CEO of LUXHUB pointed to the urgent need for better data sharing across European PSPs.
The incoming Payment Services Regulation (PSR), expected to go live in late 2028, will require PSPs to share fraud-related information across the EU, strengthening collective detection of suspicious transactions and accounts. Some countries aren’t waiting: France has already moved ahead, building a centralized platform – the FNC-RF – through Banque de France that connects domestic PSPs to share suspicious IBANs in almost real time.
Claude Meurisse highlighted: “We need more collaboration between EU countries to be as effective as possible and, hopefully, more international collaboration in the future. However, the interoperability between PSPs, and reaching PSPs internationally, will be quite a challenge to solve.”
The One Measure That Would Change Everything
If he could implement a single concrete measure tomorrow, Claude Meurisse’s answer was unequivocal: data sharing: vertical and horizontal.
” Fraudsters act as networks, so PSPs must also defend as a network. We need to promote more data sharing vertically across the finance industry, and horizontally across other industries like telcos and social networks. We need to get together and stay together.”
Fraud doesn’t respect industry silos. Combating it effectively requires a collective intelligence that spans banks, PSPs, telecoms, social platforms and beyond.
What This Means for the Road Ahead
The conversation at Nexus reflected a broader shift in how the payments industry is approaching security, away from reactive, blanket controls and toward adaptive, intelligence-driven systems. Verification of Payee will expand soon to all non-Eurozone EU PSPs and might evolve towards international transfers in the future. Transaction monitoring will grow more contextual. And the regulatory architecture for pan-European fraud data sharing is taking shape.
At LUXHUB, we are engaged in helping PSPs navigate this evolving landscape with the tools, connections, and expertise they need.
Learn more about our compliance solutions that revolve around fraud prevention