The Payments Association has warned that digital platforms such as Meta’s Facebook are a major gateway for authorised push payment (APP) fraud and has called for shared accountability across the fraud chain.
In a new white paper entitled The New Origin of APP Fraud, the trade body argues that banks are currently bearing the financial burden of scams that often originate on social media platforms. The study is based on interviews with major financial institutions including Barclays, Revolut, Nationwide and Santander UK.
APP fraud occurs when criminals manipulate victims into sending real-time payments to fraudulent accounts. According to the report, much of this fraud begins well before the transaction itself, often through fraudulent advertisements on platforms such as Facebook or Instagram before moving into private messaging services like WhatsApp or Telegram.
The research highlights that more than £250m was lost to APP fraud in the UK in the first half of 2025, with around two-thirds of reported cases originating on online platforms.
The Payments Association argues that there is a regulatory imbalance in the current UK framework. While banks and payment providers have been subject to mandatory reimbursement requirements since late 2024, the digital platforms where many scams begin are not subject to equivalent financial liability rules.
Riccardo Tordera, Vice President of Policy and Government Relations at The Payments Association, said. “For too long, the polluter has not been the one paying. While banks are working tirelessly to reimburse victims and detect suspicious transfers, they are essentially trying to catch water at the bottom of a waterfall while the source remains wide open.
“As Meta’s ecosystems have become a primary engine for scam exposure, we are calling on the government to move beyond voluntary pledges and toward mandatory, enforceable standards for digital platforms to protect consumers from APP’s point of origin.”
To address what it describes as systemic weaknesses, the report proposes a framework for shared liability across the fraud ecosystem. Recommendations include mandatory identity verification for online advertisers, defined response timelines for removing fraudulent content and financial penalties for platforms that repeatedly fail to prevent scam exposure.
The association also advocates greater real-time intelligence sharing between technology companies and financial institutions to improve early detection and prevention of scams.
The report builds on the organisation’s previous calls for reforms to tackle APP fraud and comes amid growing global scrutiny of the responsibility of major technology platforms for harms experienced by users online.
