On May 20, 2026, Apple announced that the App Store blocked more than 2.2 billion USD (about 350 billion yen) in transactions deemed fraudulent during 2025. The company rejected over 2 million problematic app submissions and blocked the creation of more than 1.1 billion fake accounts, highlighting the results of a multi-layered defense that combines human review with artificial intelligence[1].
Fraudulent Transactions Blocked Topped 2.2 Billion USD in 2025
According to Apple, the total value of fraudulent transactions blocked in 2025 reached more than 2.2 billion USD (about 350 billion yen), bringing the cumulative total over the past six years to more than 11.2 billion USD (about 1.77 trillion yen)[1]. The App Store has grown into a global marketplace with 175 storefronts visited by more than 850 million users every week, and that scale also makes it an attractive target for bad actors[1].
Apple also shared concrete figures on payment-related protections. In 2025, the company stopped more than 5.4 million stolen credit cards from being used for fraudulent purchases and banned roughly 2 million user accounts so they could never transact again[1]. Apple Pay and StoreKit, its secure payment technologies, are now used by more than 680,000 apps, and payment information is protected with industry-leading encryption at checkout[1].
※1 USD = 158 JPY (as of May 2026)
Measures Against Fake Accounts and Fraudulent Developers
Bad actors use bots to create large numbers of fake accounts and then run schemes such as spam, review manipulation, and chart manipulation. In response, Apple's systems rejected 1.1 billion fraudulent user account creations in 2025, blocking them at the point of entry[1]. The company also deactivated 40.4 million user accounts that had already been created, citing fraud or abuse[1].
The developer side is tightly managed as well. In 2025, Apple terminated 193,000 developer accounts on suspicion of fraud and rejected more than 138,000 attempts to enroll as a developer[1].
Apple's attention also extends beyond the App Store. The company detected and blocked 28,000 illegitimate apps that had been distributed on pirate app stores, including malware and pirated copies of legitimate apps[1]. In addition, in the past month alone, Apple stopped 2.9 million attempts to install or launch apps distributed illegally outside the App Store or approved alternative marketplaces[1].
Detecting Fraud in App Review and Ratings
The spread of generative AI development tools has driven a sharp rise in app submissions. The App Review team reviewed more than 9.1 million submissions in 2025 and welcomed over 306,000 new developers to the platform[1]. At the same time, it rejected more than 2 million submissions (over 1.2 million new apps and nearly 800,000 updates) for failing to comply with the guidelines[1].
The tactics used to slip past review are increasingly sophisticated. A representative example is the "bait-and-switch" scheme, in which an app is first approved as something harmless like a puzzle or calculator and then altered after review for financial fraud. Apple removed about 59,000 apps with such hidden mechanisms in 2025[1]. It also rejected more than 22,000 submissions for having hidden features, more than 371,000 for being copycats or spam, and more than 443,000 for privacy violations[1]. On TestFlight, used for pre-release testing, Apple blocked more than 2.5 million submissions over fraud or security concerns[1].
Protections also reach the ratings and reviews that users rely on when making purchase decisions. In 2025, Apple processed more than 1.3 billion ratings and reviews and blocked nearly 195 million of them as fraudulent[1]. It also removed nearly 7,800 fraudulent apps from search results and kept 11,500 apps off the charts so that honest developers would not be buried[1]. With children's usage in mind, Apple removed more than 5,000 apps that did not follow the strict rules from the "Kids" category[1].
Summary
The figures Apple published for 2025 show in concrete terms how broadly human review and machine learning operate to keep a massive marketplace like the App Store safe. The sheer scale of more than 2.2 billion USD in blocked fraudulent transactions also reflects just how many fraud attempts are made every day. The habit of checking reviews and the source of an app remains an important defense on the user's side as well. Further details on App Store safety measures are available on Apple's support page[2].
