The Payments Association Calls for Urgent Action on Meta as Report Shows Digital Platforms’ Role in Fraud Crisis

WHY THIS MATTERS
This report goes to the heart of one of the biggest tensions in modern payments: who is actually responsible for fraud in a digital-first world. While banks have invested heavily in detection, prevention and reimbursement, the data shows that a large proportion of APP fraud originates upstream on social media platforms. This creates a structural imbalance where financial institutions are accountable for losses, but lack control over the environments where scams begin.

With over £250 million lost to APP fraud in just six months in the UK, and two-thirds of cases linked to online platforms, the issue is no longer marginal. It exposes a regulatory gap where payments firms are tightly governed, but digital platforms operate largely under voluntary standards. The push for shared liability, advertiser verification and real-time intelligence sharing reflects a growing recognition that fraud prevention must be addressed across the entire ecosystem, not just at the point of payment.

The Payments Association, a trade body representing the payments sector, has released a report on the role digital platforms like Meta’s Facebook play in scam exposure and presents a case for shared accountability across the fraud chain.

Based on interviews with major financial institutions including Barclays, Revolut, Nationwide and Santander UK, the white paper, entitled The New Origin of APP Fraud, highlights growing concern across the sector that banks are being forced to bear the cost of fraud originating on major digital platforms.

The association has called on the government and regulators to prioritise the enforcement of standards for social media giants to stem the tide of financial crime, as the report highlights that such platforms are a primary gateway for scammers to perpetrate authorised push payment (APP) fraud.

APP fraud occurs when criminals trick victims into manually sending real-time payments to fraudulent accounts. 

The report reveals a critical disconnect in the current UK regulatory framework. While the banking and payments sectors have been subject to mandatory reimbursement rules since late 2024, the digital platforms where scams actually originate face no equivalent enforceable financial liability regime.

It shows that a majority of APP fraud begins long before a transaction is initiated, often starting with fraudulent advertisements on Facebook or Instagram, and often migrating into private messaging channels such as WhatsApp and Telegram. The research highlights that in the first half of 2025 alone, over £250 million was lost to APP fraud in the UK, with around two-thirds of reported cases originating on online platforms.

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.”

This latest whitepaper builds upon years of dedicated campaigning by The Payments Association regarding the dangers of APP fraud in the UK. The Association has consistently argued that the burden of fraud prevention has been unfairly skewed toward financial institutions, while tech companies have operated with voluntary commitments that have failed to deliver a sustained reduction in scam exposure. 

To address these systemic failings, the whitepaper outlines a framework for shared liability that includes mandatory identity verification for advertisers and the implementation of defined response timelines for removing fraudulent content. The Payments Association is also advocating for the introduction of financial repercussions for platforms that repeatedly fail to prevent scam exposure, alongside a requirement for real-time intelligence sharing between tech firms and the payments industry. Without these interventions, the Association warns that the UK’s fraud crisis will continue to scale, leaving the financial system and the general public to bear the multi-million-pound consequences of digital platform negligence.

This comes mere days after a Los Angeles jury awarded $6 million in a landmark social media addiction case involving Instagram, highlighting growing global scrutiny of major tech platforms’ responsibility for user harm. 

FF NEWS TAKE
This is a clear escalation in the industry’s stance toward Big Tech. The Payments Association is effectively arguing that fraud is not just a banking problem, it’s a platform problem—and the current model is unsustainable.

If regulators act, this could mark a turning point where social media companies are brought into the financial accountability framework for the first time. That would fundamentally reshape how fraud is managed, forcing closer collaboration between banks and tech firms. The challenge will be balancing enforcement with practicality, but the direction of travel is clear: responsibility for fraud is moving upstream, closer to where it actually starts.