Every year, factoring companies quietly write off millions to a problem that rarely makes headlines: invoices that were never real to begin with. In 2024, 44% of businesses reported being hit by invoice fraud, with each incident costing an average of $22,000. For a factor moving hundreds of invoices through the pipeline every month, those numbers stop being a statistic and start being a margin problem. That is why serious factoring support services are no longer a cost center. They are insurance on every dollar advanced. The International Factoring Association (IFA) called out synthetic-identity schemes and duplicate invoicing as the two fastest-growing threats going into 2025. And the hard truth is that once funds are advanced on a fraudulent invoice, recovery is rare. The money is usually gone before the coffee gets cold. So the real question is not whether fraud will reach your portfolio. It is which gaps it walks through, and which ones you close first.…