KUALA LUMPUR/MANILA — Southeast Asia is racing toward a future built around artificial intelligence, digital banking, online government services and increasingly connected economies. But a new report has exposed a problem that could threaten that transformation from the inside: nearly half of reported scam cases in six of the region’s biggest digital markets remain unresolved.
The GSMA ASEAN Consumer Scam Report 2026 found that 45% of reported scam cases across Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam had not been resolved, even as consumers became more alert to online fraud and took additional steps to protect themselves.
That distinction matters. The survey covered six Southeast Asian markets rather than every ASEAN member state, but collectively they represent some of the region’s largest populations and digital economies.
And the unresolved cases may be creating a problem much bigger than the money stolen.
They are weakening people’s confidence in the digital systems ASEAN governments and companies increasingly want consumers to use.
One in 12 surveyed consumers was scammed in the past year
According to GSMA, 8% of consumers surveyed said they had been scammed during the previous 12 months.
Among those victims, 68% said they lost money. Recovery was particularly difficult: 82% of those who suffered financial losses recovered none of the money they lost, while only 10% recovered everything.
Reporting a scam did not necessarily bring closure either.
About 69% of scam victims reported the incident, yet 45% of reported cases remained unresolved, according to GSMA.
That gap between reporting fraud and getting a resolution could become one of the region’s most serious digital-economy challenges.
Victims whose cases remain unresolved reported lower confidence in communication channels, online platforms and data sharing. People who had experienced scams were also more than twice as likely to switch accounts or service providers compared with consumers who had not been scammed.
In other words, fraud does not end when the money disappears.
It can change how consumers use the internet.
Messaging apps have become the biggest scam channel
Scammers are also following consumers onto the platforms they use most frequently.
The GSMA study found that messaging applications accounted for 41% of scam encounters, making them the most common channel through which surveyed consumers encountered fraudulent activity.
Investment fraud, cryptocurrency schemes, fake online shopping offers and fraudulent job opportunities are also becoming increasingly prominent.
Many of these schemes rely less on directly stealing banking credentials and more on persuading victims to voluntarily transfer their own money.
That makes fraud harder to stop.
A transaction may technically be authorized by the account holder even though the decision was manipulated through impersonation, social engineering or a fabricated investment opportunity.
AI is making impersonation more convincing
Artificial intelligence is adding another layer to the problem.
GSMA found that 96% of surveyed consumers were worried about being scammed or hacked, while nearly nine in 10 recognized at least one way AI could be used in fraudulent schemes.
AI tools can help criminals create more convincing phishing messages, imitate voices, manipulate video and produce fake identities at a scale that would previously have required far more time and manpower.
INTERPOL issued a similar warning in June.
Its 2025/2026 Asia and South Pacific Cyberthreat Assessment found that more than half of the countries it surveyed reported cybercrime accounting for more than 30% of all recorded crime nationally. INTERPOL said phishing and other cyber-enabled scams were among the most widespread and financially damaging threats, with criminals increasingly using AI and sophisticated social engineering techniques.
The implication is uncomfortable: as legitimate companies automate more of their customer interactions with AI, criminals can automate deception as well.
The scam economy has grown into a multibillion-dollar industry
The scale becomes even clearer when the GSMA findings are viewed alongside data from the United Nations.
A United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime assessment released in July estimated that scam operations caused between US$88.3 billion and US$114.1 billion in losses across East Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand in 2025.
UNODC said transnational criminal networks have become increasingly sophisticated, combining online fraud with money laundering, human trafficking, data harvesting and underground financial services.
Some scam centres in Southeast Asia have also relied on trafficked workers who are forced to participate in fraudulent operations.
People from at least 80 countries and territories have been identified in scam compounds around the region, according to UNODC.
That means what may appear to a victim as a single suspicious message can sometimes be connected to a much larger international criminal infrastructure.
The Philippines is already feeling the pressure
The threat has particular relevance for Filipinos, whose everyday lives have become increasingly dependent on mobile wallets, social media, online shopping, digital banking and messaging applications.
Earlier GSMA research cited by The Philippine Star found that 52% of Filipino respondents said they had been scammed at least once in their lives, above the regional average measured in that earlier study. Eight percent said they had been victimized during the preceding 12 months.
Philippine authorities have also stepped up enforcement.
The Philippine National Police Anti-Cybercrime Group recorded 323 operations involving illegal sales of financial accounts and online swindling from January through July 2026, according to The Philippine Star.
But enforcement alone faces a structural problem: digital fraud frequently crosses several systems and jurisdictions at once.
A scammer can contact a victim through one platform, impersonate another organization, direct payment through a financial institution and move the proceeds through multiple accounts or cryptocurrency networks within minutes.
No single bank, telecommunications company, technology platform or police agency necessarily sees the entire chain.
Other countries are experimenting with faster intervention
Singapore offers one example of how governments are trying to intervene before money disappears.
In an operation conducted between July and August, Singapore’s Anti-Scam Centre and five banks disrupted more than 400 scam attempts and prevented more than S$46 million in potential losses, according to police figures reported by Channel NewsAsia.
Singapore also reported 16,821 scam cases during the first half of 2026, down 14.4% from the same period a year earlier, showing that aggressive intervention can make a difference even though fraud remains a major problem.
The challenge is turning successful national measures into faster cross-border cooperation.
ASEAN’s digital future may depend on something harder to build than infrastructure
A separate GSMA report released alongside the scam study, Digital Nations 2026: Building Trusted Digital Ecosystems in ASEAN, argues that the next stage of Southeast Asia’s digital transformation cannot depend solely on faster networks or broader internet access.
It identifies four foundations for digital trust: verified identity, trusted communications, resilient networks and collective intelligence.
That means confirming who is really behind a digital interaction, making communications harder to impersonate, strengthening cybersecurity infrastructure and enabling institutions to share information about emerging threats more quickly.
Mobile carriers, banks, online platforms and governments increasingly need to operate as parts of the same anti-fraud system rather than as separate lines of defense.
The underlying problem is simple.
Consumers cannot be expected to move deeper into digital banking, AI services, e-commerce and digital government if every message, investment offer, phone call or payment request has to be treated as potentially fraudulent.
Southeast Asia has spent years expanding connectivity.
Its next challenge may be considerably harder: convincing hundreds of millions of connected consumers that the digital world they are being asked to embrace can still be trusted.
And with 45% of reported scam cases unresolved across six key markets, the region’s digital race may ultimately depend not just on how quickly ASEAN can innovate—but on how quickly it can close the gap between reporting a scam and actually resolving one.
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