British banks, tech companies and telecommunications reportedly promised to increase their fraudulent data sharing.
The commitment, as the Financial Times reported on Monday (March 31), is a call for leadership in helping online fraudsters fight.
According to the report, the companies behind the promise have transitioned from the testing phase to begin real-time exchange of fraud indication data (unusual transactions, suspicious URLs) to detect scammers faster.
The banks involved include Barclays, HSBC, Santander and Lloyds, joined by tech giants such as Amazon, Yuan and Google and Telecom.
The report, citing data from the Office of National Statistics, shows that fraud accounts for 41% of crimes committed in England and Wales, with an estimated $8.8 billion a year.
“By making this commitment, our members are redouble their efforts to create a safer environment for all online businesses and consumers,” said Ruth Evans, chairman of the group Stop Scams UK UK, the group behind the initiative.
CEO Mark Tierney told FT that the organization tried a data-sharing pilot in 2023, although the amount of information shared is negligible.
He added that the program changed from “exponential”, thanks to the introduction of an automated system that can transmit “thousands of data points” every day between the three departments.
The work is separate from Meta's data-sharing protocols with Natwest and Metro Bank, which helped social platforms delete 20,000 scam accounts, FT noted.
As PYMNTS wrote earlier this month, this happened at the time of an explosion on banks and their customers.
“The fraudsters attract humanity in ways that aim to get accounts and run out of accounts – pleading text, phone calls and artificial intelligence (AI) tips for donations, romance, bail, release from prison, and more,” the report said.
“The scammers are diligent and become more and more business-like, moving beyond the blast emails, their personalized approach to picking victims.”
The research found in the PYMNTS intelligence report, “The impact of financial scams on consumer finance and banking habits,” shows that there are two types of scams that cause more financial losses than average.
These are investment scams with a median of $1,104 and a romantic scam (median of $1,996). Additionally, the romance scam also takes an average of 3.6 transactions, which is almost twice the number of transactions involved in other methods.
