Our Head of Business Development, Eleanor Page, recently joined a panel of fellow industry experts at Pay360 to discuss how banks, fintechs, regulators and innovators are working together in the fight against fraud.
Attended by leading representatives from banking, regulatory, policy-making, and big tech organisations, this year’s two-day event explored global payments innovations, the next steps in open banking, finance and data, and strategies and solutions in tackling financial crime.
During the session on the theme of ‘The Scamdemic: Fighting Fraud at Scale’, the panellists debated:
- Current industry tools and measures to keep up the fight against fraud
- The latest global regulatory moves on fraud prevention, and their effectiveness
- Bold steps that the industry could take through the sharing of data to mitigate fraud.
The panel noted that fraud is evolving faster than ever, with $1.03 trillion lost globally in 2023. With this in mind, the panel was asked, “Are we losing the fight against fraud?”, and responded in agreement that fraud is not a battle that has been lost, but rather one that is ongoing.
As part of the discussion, Ellie introduced Pay.UK and our Fraud programme, explaining that we have a unique and independent role at the centre of the payments ecosystem, which means that we can take a whole-of-market approach to fraud. We look at fraud detection, prevention, and reimbursement as part of the same solution, and have put in place several tools to ensure maximum protection from authorised push payment (APP) fraud for people and businesses across the UK. These include:
- The successful expansion of our account name-checking service, Confirmation of Payee to over 300 new organisations. The service now covers 99% of all faster Payment System and CHAPS transactions.
- The delivery of our Reimbursement Claims Management System (RCMS). In 2024, the Payment Systems Regulator’s (PSR) Specific Direction 20 (SD20) mandated banks and other payment service providers (PSPs) to reimburse victims of APP fraud. To support PSPs in meeting these legal obligations, we developed the RCMS as a whole-of-market solution to facilitate and streamline the management of reimbursement claims for PSPs. We continue to develop the system to further support the reimbursement regime and drive efficiencies for PSPs as well as monitoring PSP compliance with the Direction, as required by the PSR’s Specific Direction 19 (SD19).
- The development of our new fraud detection and prevention overlay service, following a successful fraud detection pilot last year. With a focus on the benefits of data sharing, we collected data from eight banks and demonstrated an average 40% uplift in fraud detection, compared to individual banks’ data analysis.
The panel went on to discuss that, whilst financial crime legislation has been established in the UK, fraud is a global, far-reaching problem that requires a coordinated response across international jurisdictions. Through cross-border and cross-sector collaboration, and the sharing of data, we can pinpoint the weak spots of the fraudsters and develop responsive and scalable financial crime solutions.
Ellie said: “Through working together and sharing our data, both domestically and internationally, we can strengthen the ecosystem and reinforce our strong position in the fight against fraud. How we do this is no mean feat but events, such as Pay360, are an important step towards building these vital networks and providing the insight that, ultimately, lead to the development of new strategies and solutions.”
