Equifax UK Launches Real-time, Purpose-built Solution to Counter APP Fraud at Point of Authorisation

WHY THIS MATTERS

The launch of Authorized Payment Protection by Equifax in the UK represents a vital shield for banks and Payment Service Providers (PSPs) navigating a costly structural regulatory shift. Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud—where victims are socially engineered into willingly transferring massive sums to bad actors—surged to £257.5 million in the first half of 2025 alone. Since the UK Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) enacted its strict mandatory reimbursement rules, the financial burden has flipped completely onto the banks, forcing a 50/50 liability split between the sending and receiving institutions for claims up to £85,000.

Historically, standard anti-fraud models were designed to catch account takeovers, monitoring the sender’s behavioral anomalies and session habits. APP fraud breaks these legacy models because the legitimate account holder is the one typing in the numbers and clearing biometric checks. Equifax’s new solution implements a 360-degree pre-authorisation risk engine. By leveraging its massive global data consortium and custom machine learning, the system scrutinizes the destination account in milliseconds before the transaction settles. It explicitly screens for “sleeper” and fast-moving “mule” accounts—the core infrastructure criminals use to layer and disperse stolen funds—effectively intercepting scams at the point of greatest vulnerability.

Equifax, the global data, analytics and technology company, has launched Authorized Payment Protection in the UK, a purpose-built solution designed to help prevent Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud in real-time, before funds leave a customer’s account.

Unlike other solutions on the market that have been adapted from card fraud models, Authorized Payment Protection monitors real-time bank transfer journeys and can be deployed by institutions of any size through a single, modern API.

Key capabilities include:

1. Destination account intelligence to flag ‘sleeper’ and fast-moving mule accounts – accounts used by criminals to receive and disperse stolen funds.
2. Real-time decisioning via a risk Application Programming Interface (API), providing stop/go/review decisions in milliseconds before a payment is authorised.
3. Leveraging a global fraud data consortium and a specialised AI model to assess account history and transaction velocities and adapt quickly to emerging typologies, including AI-enabled scams.

In the UK alone, APP fraud losses climbed to £257.5 million in the first half of 2025 – a 12% year-on-year1 increase that signals a growing global crisis. Since the UK Payment Systems Regulator introduced mandatory reimbursement in October 2024, the financial and operational stakes for banks have substantially increased. Equifax is meeting this challenge with a 360-degree safety net: a pre-authorisation risk assessment that scrutinises both the sender and the destination account in milliseconds, stopping fraud before the funds ever leave the customer’s pocket.

By evaluating the comprehensive financial footprint of the destination account alongside the originator’s profile, the solution enables banks and Payment Service Providers (PSPs) to move beyond traditional session and originator-only monitoring to help stop scams at the critical moment of decision.

Stephen Adams, Principal Consultant – Identity & Fraud Risk at Equifax, said: “The fraud landscape is growing ever more sophisticated, increasing the potential threat to consumers and the burden on businesses. We want to unite banks and PSPs under a single transparent framework to try and reduce fraud happening at the point of authorisation. By focusing on destination account analysis, Authorized Payment Protection from Equifax can help businesses big and small boost efficiency, protect consumers, and reduce the need for reimbursements.”

Authorized Payment Protection is now available for banks, PSPs, fintechs and e-commerce platforms in the UK and select international markets. It has already been launched with success in parts of Latin America. Redeban, Colombia’s leading electronic payment processor and financial technology infrastructure provider, is already using the solution.

FF NEWS TAKE

Equifax is directly monetizing compliance panic across the UK financial sector. While smaller fintechs and regional tier-2 banks have struggled to build deep, behavioral risk tracking internally, Equifax is democratizing institutional-grade defense via a single, modern API. The strategy has already been heavily battle-tested across Latin America through major infrastructure processors like Colombia’s Redeban, proving its viability under extreme real-time transactional stress.

The true operational value here is the focus on destination account intelligence. Because generative AI has enabled fraudsters to build hyper-convincing, personalized deepfake and phishing scripts at scale, protecting the sender is no longer a viable perimeter strategy. By analyzing the inbound velocity, age, and systemic history of the receiving account, Equifax can return an accurate stop/go decision in milliseconds without introducing unnecessary checkout friction for genuine users. In an era where a bank’s profitability is directly linked to its fraud mitigation performance, this architecture changes APP defense from an expensive post-crime insurance payout into a clean, automated transaction gatekeeper.