Jakub Porzycki | Photo only | Getty Images
Facebook parent company Meta announced on Wednesday that it was working with two leading banks in the United Kingdom on an information sharing agreement to protect consumers from fraud.
Meta announced that it is expanding its Fraud Intelligence Reciprocal Exchange (FIPE) to allow UK banks to share information directly with the social media giant to help it detect and eliminate fraudulent accounts and coordinated fraud schemes.
Meta said the technology has already been tested with several lenders in the UK. In one example, Meta said it was able to suspend 20,000 accounts of fraudsters involved in a concert ticket fraud network targeting people in the UK and US thanks to shared data from British lenders NatWest and Metro Bank.
NatWest and Metro Bank are the only UK banks currently part of the fraud information sharing pact, but Meta says more will be joining later.
“As part of this work, we have already taken action against thousands of accounts run by fraudsters, which shows how important it is that banks and platforms work together to address this societal problem,” Nathaniel Gleicher, global head of fraud at Meta, said on Wednesday in a statement.
“We will only defeat 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 combat further fraud worldwide,” Gleicher added.
Meta has long faced calls from banks in the UK to do more to stop fraudsters from running rampant on its platforms, which include Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
In 2022, British digital bank Starling, backed by Goldman Sachs, began boycotting Meta and removing advertising from its platforms over concerns that the company was failing to combat fraudulent financial advertising.
Meta's apps have often been abused by scammers who attempt to scam users out of their money through various fraudulent schemes.
One of the most common forms of fraud users encounter on the Company's platforms is authorized push payment fraud, where criminals attempt to convince people to send them money by posing as individuals or companies selling a service .
Meta already has policies in place that prohibit the promotion of financial fraud, such as loan scams and schemes that promise high returns. The company also prohibits ads that promise unrealistic results or guarantee a financial return.