Meta, owner of Facebook, partners with UK banks to combat scams through data sharing

Facebook parent company Meta on Wednesday said that it’s working with two leading banks in the U.K. on an information-sharing arrangement to help protect consumers from fraud.

Meta said it was expanding its Fraud Intelligence Reciprocal Exchange (FIRE) to enable U.K. banks to directly share information with the social media giant, in a bid to help it detect and take down scamming accounts and coordinated fraud schemes.

Meta said that the tech has already been tested with multiple lenders in the U.K. In one example, Meta says it was able to take down 20,000 accounts from scammers engaged in a concert ticket scam network targeting people in the U.K. and U.S., thanks to data shared by British lenders NatWest and Metro Bank.

NatWest and Metro Bank are the only banks in the U.K. that are currently part of the fraud information-sharing pact, but more are set to join later on, according to Meta.

“This work has already seen us take action against thousands of accounts run by scammers, indicating the importance of banks and platforms working together to tackle this societal issue,” Nathaniel Gleicher, global head of counter-fraud at Meta, said in a statement Wednesday.

“We will only beat these criminals if we work together and share relevant information related to scams. Financial institutions can share unique information with us which we can in turn use to train our systems to take action against more scams globally,” Gleicher added.

Meta has long faced calls from banks in the U.K. to do more to stop scammers from running rampant on its platforms, which include Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

In 2022, British digital bank Starling, which is backed by Goldman Sachs, began boycotting Meta and pulled advertising from its platforms over concerns that the company was failing to tackle fraudulent financial advertising.

Meta’s apps have been frequently abused by scammers attempting to swindle users out of their money through a variety of fraudulent schemes.

One of the most common forms of scams users encounter on the company’s platforms is authorized push payment fraud, through which criminals attempt to convince people to send them money by impersonating individuals or businesses that are selling a service.

Meta already has policies in place banning promotion of financial fraud, such as loan scams and schemes promising high rates of returns. The firm also prohibits ads that promise unrealistic results or guarantee a financial return.