Bank CEOs Urge PM to Make Tech Companies Bear Cost of Online Fraud 'Pandemic'

The bankers warned that the government's National Fraud Strategy is inadequate to tackle the scale of the crisis, which they believe is costing more than £1bn every year to tackle.

They stated that £2,300 was stolen from British consumers every day last year by fraudsters and that they would consider taking further action, including slowing down payments, to protect their customers without wider government intervention.

The banks' collective intervention underlines growing frustration at the fact that big technology companies such as Meta Platforms, the owner of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, are bearing so little of the financial burden generated by fraud.

The banks want tech companies to be responsible for stopping scams at source, to contribute to refunds for victims of fraud originating on their platforms, and for a public register showing the scale of tech giants' failure to prevent scams.

Bank chiefs from Barclays have expressed concerns to the UK Prime Minister about the prevalence of fraud in the UK and have called for more action to be taken to protect consumers.

They reported that £2,300 was stolen from British consumers every day last year by fraudsters and that tech companies, particularly those in the telecoms and tech sectors, should be held responsible for stopping scams on their platforms and contributing to refunds for innocent victims.

The bank chiefs also called for data to be published regularly to name and shame tech companies over the level of fraud originating from their platforms and for the government to be more ambitious in its target of reducing online fraud by 10%, aiming instead for a 25% reduction.