Banks push for tech giants to share scam ad costs
Social media companies are facing renewed calls to help pay for tackling online fraud, as the UK prepares to unveil its updated national fraud strategy.
The Payments Association said platforms like Meta Platforms and X should take greater responsibility for scam adverts that appear on their sites, arguing they profit from the ads, while banks and payment firms shoulder most of the costs when fraud occurs.
The industry group is urging ministers to extend the UK’s economic crime levy to social media and telecoms companies, forcing them to contribute financially to combating online fraud.
The push comes ahead of the government’s refreshed national fraud strategy, which is expected to be published soon.
Scam adverts, often using AI tools to impersonate trusted brands, have surged across social media feeds and search results in recent years.
The ads typically promote fake goods or services to extract payments or personal data from consumers.
Research cited by the association suggests UK shoppers now see around 185 scam adverts each month on average across platforms including Facebook, Instagram and X.
The financial toll is rising, with Juniper Research showing UK consumers lost £44m to fake advert scams in 2025, with losses projected to reach £84m by 2030.
Most of the scams fall under authorised push payment (APP) fraud, where victims are persuaded to voluntarily transfer money to criminals.
Since October 2024, tougher consumer protection rules have required payment service providers to reimburse victims of APP fraud. Banks and payment firms have reimbursed around 87 per cent of scam-related losses under the scheme.
However, the Payments Association says social media giants, where many scams come from, contribute nothing toward those reimbursements.
Scam ads generate revenue
At the same time, platforms still earn revenue from the advertising ecosystem. Industry estimates suggest scam adverts generated around £3.8bn in social media ad revenue in 2025, roughly ten per cent of total platform advertising income.
Riccardo Tordera Ricchi, vice president for policy and government relations at the Payments Association, said: “Payment firms are expected to stop fraud at the point money is transferred when the real crime has been committed upstream, through digital communication and scam advertising”.
“It cannot be right that while social media platforms benefit from the revenue generated by online fraud, consumers and payment firms are left to pick up the bill for that crime”, he added.
The group wants a “shared responsibility framework”, where liability for economic crime is distributed across the ecosystem based on where the fraud originates.
Under its proposal, tech platforms would help fund fraud prevention efforts alongside banks and payment companies.
The UK has become a major target for scam advertising. Estimates suggest the country generated 95bn scam ad impressions in 2025, a figure expected to rise to 137bn by 2030.
Alongside financial contributions, the Payments Association is calling on technology firms to strengthen advertiser verification and sign up to the industry’s online fraud charter.
It also wants legislation enabling wider data sharing between payments firms, telecoms operators, ecommerce platforms and law enforcement.
The group has proposed creating a UK digital payments fraud centre – an independent hub using AI to detect fraud trends and coordinate responses across sectors.
The push comes as AI is increasingly used by criminals to produce deepfakes, voice clones and other convincing scam tools at scale, making fraud harder to detect.
Research from Mastercard found organisations lost an average of $60m (£45m) to payment fraud last year, while global fraud losses exceeded $485bn in 2023.
Rachel Reeves has previously indicated the government is examining whether tech and telecoms companies should play a larger role in preventing online fraud.
For payment firms, the upcoming strategy may determine whether that responsibility is finally shared.