Meta teams up with UK banks to fight scammers

By sharing information directly with Meta, UK banks can help take down fraudulent accounts

Meta, parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, has announced a new partnership with leading UK banks to combat online fraud.

The collaboration, through the Fraud Intelligence Reciprocal Exchange (FIRE), aims to enhance Meta's ability to detect and dismantle scam networks operating on its platforms.

By sharing information directly with Meta, UK banks can help the social media giant identify and take down fraudulent accounts.

"Today, we're announcing the expansion of a first-of-its-kind information sharing partnership with banks to help protect people against fraud. The Fraud Intelligence Reciprocal Exchange (FIRE) is a threat intelligence sharing programme for financial institutions, allowing banks to share intelligence with us directly so we can use it to stop scammers and protect users," Meta said in a blog post.

NatWest and Metro Bank are the first UK banks to join the FIRE initiative, but Meta expects more to follow.

The company has already seen success in using shared data to dismantle scam networks. For instance, information from these banks helped Meta identify and shut down 20,000 accounts involved in a concert ticket scam targeting users in the UK and the US.

This collaboration is crucial in the fight against online scammers, says Nathaniel Gleicher, Global Head of Counter-Fraud at Meta.

"We will only beat these criminals if we work together and share relevant information related to scams. Financial institutions can share unique information with us which we can in turn use to train our systems to take action against more scams globally," he added.

The new partnership comes amid growing pressure on Meta to do more to prevent scammers from operating on its platforms. In recent years, several financial institutions have criticised the company for failing to adequately address the issue.

Meta has long had policies in place to combat financial fraud, but it has faced challenges in keeping up with the evolving tactics of scammers.

Banks continue to pressure big tech companies to take greater responsibility for fraud that originates on their platforms.

In the UK, a mandatory reimbursement policy for authorised push payment (APP) fraud will take effect on 7^th October 2024. Introduced by the Payment Services Regulator (PSR) on 7 June 2023, the new rules will require UK payment service providers to compensate affected customers in most cases of APP fraud, with a few exceptions. But with the majority of APP fraud occurring online, banks argue that tech giants should share the burden of preventing such losses.

The expansion of the FIRE programme has been welcomed by the banking industry, as well as by law enforcement agencies.

David Lindberg, CEO of Retail Banking at NatWest, praised the partnership as "an important step in tackling the epidemic of fraud."

Law enforcement agencies have also expressed support for the initiative.

Adrian Searle, Director of the National Economic Crime Centre, highlighted the importance of collaboration between the public and private sectors in preventing fraud.

Mark Tierney, CEO of Stop Scams UK, a collaborative project aimed at combating scams, praised FIRE as a potential game-changer for reporting fraudulent content.

"Stop Scams UK passionately believes that collaborative projects such as FIRE can lead to wider data sharing and improve reporting which is key to successfully tackling scams," Tierney said.