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Meta Partners with UK Banks to Combat Scams through Data Sharing

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Meta said it would work with two large banks in the U.K. to share information aimed at rooting out fraud, leading to the idea of Meta Bank.

On Wednesday October 2,2024, Meta said it would work with two large banks in the U.K. to share information aimed at rooting out fraud, leading to the idea of Meta Banks.

The collaboration is to protect consumers by identifying and removing scamming accounts from its platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

It’s also growing the fraud prevention by allowing UK banks to share directly with the company critical information through its Fraud Intelligence Reciprocal Exchange, FIPE. This information helps Meta in detecting and stopping fraudsters and their networks that try to scam users.

Operation of Joint to Stop Scams

Meta tested this sharing scheme in combination with NatWest and Metro Bank. According to Meta, these efforts have already spawned significant results.

Data from the two banks helped take down 20,000 accounts involved in a concert ticket scam network that targeted people in both the U.K. and the U.S., the company said.

Currently, only NatWest and Metro Bank take part in the scheme, but Meta said that more banks would join ‘in the coming months’. Meta’s global head of counter-fraud, Nathaniel Gleicher said: “This work has already seen us take action against thousands of accounts run by scammers, underlining the importance of banks and platforms working together to tackle this societal issue.

A Larger Fight Against Fraud

Scammers for a long period have targeted the platforms of Meta while conducting a wide range of scams. That now includes authorized push payment fraud, in which bad actors pose as businesses or individuals to trick users into transferring money.

 It is for that reason that Meta has policies prohibiting the promotion of financial scams on its platforms, including loan scams and other schemes promising unreal returns.

It seems, though, that banks in the U.K. have been pushing the idea of the Meta Banks to do more. In 2022 alone, the British digital bank Starling even boycotted Meta’s platforms, halting its advertising amid worries over Meta’s handling of fraudulent financial ads.

This new partnership between the idea of the Meta bank and U.K. banks marks a big leap forward in fighting fraud online. Sharing the information with financial institutions will help Meta reinforce its mechanisms to lower the number of scams affecting its users worldwide. As Gleicher noted, “We will only beat these criminals if we work together and share relevant information related to scams.”

The joint venture shows how technology companies and banks can collaborate on the best ways to protect people online and against fraud.

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