UK Finance 2024 APP Scam Statistics Shows Changing Scammer Tactics and the Need for Telcos and Digital Platforms to Join the Fight
In late May 2025, UK Finance produced its annual report on unauthorized and authorized fraud in the UK for the year 2024. This blog will focus on the authorized transaction activity, known as Authorized Push Payments (APP). The one caveat to the UK Finance data is that it only comes from the 33 contributing members of UK Finance; however, this this includes all of the large banks. This makes it difficult to compare the data to say Australia’s recent scam loss data for 2024, where the scam data comes from Australian government sources. Plus, most of the UK Finance data is from Faster Payments, which is where most of the scams occur in the UK.
As a result, it will be hard to say if one country is doing better than another. What we can clearly say is that the effort in the UK, with strong bank scam controls and money mule controls, along with consumer reimbursement up to £85,000, is working to contain consumer scams. As we will see later, the APP scam numbers did not drop very much, as I had hoped for in 2024.
Assessment of the Results
APP scam fraud, as reported by UK Finance shows losses flattening out (only down 2%) from 2023 to 2024. Table 1 shows the scam details from 2020–2024. In reviewing these statistics, remember that mandatory scam reimbursement began October 7, 2024. So, for the final three months of 2024, the reimbursement should have been at about 90% of the scam losses. Yet, these statistics show that although scam losses went from £459.7 million in 2023 down to £450.7 million in 2024, reimbursement dropped from £287.3 million in 2023 to £267.1 million in 2024, whereas reimbursement should have risen with the new mandate.
The reimbursement rate in 2024, including the three months under mandatory reimbursement, was 59.2%. The reimbursement rate in 2023, with only voluntary reimbursement from the large UK banks, was higher at 62%. When we look at the May 2025 report from the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR), they only showed reimbursement of £27 million for the first three months of the reimbursement program (October 7 2024–January 7 2025) at an 86% reimbursement rate for this period. For a three month period, this should have probably been a higher amount of reimbursement, given the UK Finance 2024 APP scam loss number of £450.7 for all of 2024. The PSR report did not include the total scam losses for this 3 month period.
The PSR did report that the volume of APP claims during that 3 month period were lower than expected, providing early feedback that there was not a rush of first party fraud.
I would have expected the total value of gross scam losses to have been materially lower in 2024, given all of the scam controls and money mule controls required of payment service providers. As an offset, we know the scammers are using GenAI to create better impersonation scams, romance scams, and investment scams.
Table 1: 2024 APP Scam Cases
One scam that did increase in amount is the investment scam. This is becoming a real problem around the world. Table 2 shows the growth in investment scams, up 34% in 2024. The average loss for an investment scam is always higher than other scam losses. The average investment loss in 2024 was £18,500.
Table 2: 2024 APP Investment Scams
One scam category that declined in amount is the romance scam. Table three shows the value of romance scams dropped 17%. The hope here is that strong consumer education has helped to lower these losses.
Table 3: 2024 APP Romance Scams
Impersonation scams dropped for both “Police/Bank” and “Other” (e.g. utility company) impersonations. “Police/Bank” dropped by 16% and “Other” by 38% in 2024.
Table 4: 2024 APP Impersonation Police/Bank Staff Scams
Table 5: 2024 APP Impersonation Other Scams
The report has a key table, Payment Type, that shows the payment types the scam transactions used. As expected, this shows Faster Payments has the bulk of the scam activity, at 78% in 2024. Faster Payments used to be as high as 96% of APP scams.
Both intrabank transfers and International payment types, neither covered by the reimbursement program (although the Payment Systems Regulator informally requests payment service providers to reimburse intrabank transfers), grew in 2024, for a total of 12.4% of scam payments. Both effectively doubled in 2024. International payments are almost £50 million. It will be interesting to see if the scammers pivot to payment types that are not covered by reimbursement, thinking banks will not have as much protection for non-reimbursement transactions. See Table 6 for the details.
Table 6: 2024 APP Payment Types
What is still so troubling is the fact that most of these consumer scams start as a telephone call/text message or from the digital platforms. The report lists the source of these scams:
- Telecommunications: 36% of the amount of loss
- Online: (digital channels/dating sites) 29% of the amount of loss
- Email: 10% of the amount of loss
It is difficult to get these other players to participate in helping to reduce scams. There is some progress, especially when there is regulation forcing action. We see this in Australia with the Scam Prevention Framework. There is the Online Safety Act in the UK, but penalties have not yet kick in. Even Vietnam has a new regulation that holds banks, telcos and digital platforms accountable for adding scam prevention controls or be liable for scam losses.
Other Activities in the UK That Helps Reduce Scams
The UK has a number ‘whole-of-ecosystem” controls that help fight scams. The report mentioned several:
- The Banking Protocol: This is where branch staff can request local police help to convince customer to not complete a scam transaction. According to the report, this action prevented £61 million from being stolen in 2024 alone.
- Vulnerable Victim Notification: Law Enforcement can notify banks regarding customers vulnerable to scams. This occurred over 600 times in 2024.
- Scam Signal: The banks worked with the telcos to create an alert when a customer is doing a transaction online AND is on a call. This is also effective with card payments.
- The Best Practice Standards: A secure platform where banks and payment service providers share information relating to fraud and scams. The real-time capability helps to freeze scam money at the receiving bank.
- Online Safety Act: The legislation will require digital platforms to identify and remove scam ads and fraudulent search content.
Closing
So what do the 2024 UK APP scam statistics mean?
The UK is containing scam losses, but not effectively decreasing them. This has been accomplished by strong regulatory requirements around consumer scam controls and money mule controls. Plus, a mandatory reimbursement program to reimburse for most APP scams that mainly use the domestic faster payment rail.
The UK Finance report stated: “there is nothing to suggest it (the mandatory reimbursement) has had any impact on the perpetrators. If anything, it may have resulted in them focusing more on international payments (no reimbursement for international payments).” This is probably true, but what they fail to say is that the mandatory reimbursement is one of the key drivers for banks and payment service providers to have very strong scam controls and money mule management.
Reimbursement, along with the regulations around scam controls and money mule management, helped create the scam controls business cases for UK banks. As an example, as we look at the US, there is no regulation for scam controls and money mule management, and no reimbursement, and as a result, many financial institutions do not do much to help reduce consumer scams. And the US consumer scam losses skyrocket.
It is troubling to see investment scams, with higher losses, growing. And with the surge of crypto currency being the new ‘sure thing’ investment, we will see more losses.
Equally troubling is the power of GenAI. New releases by various vendors of their Large Language Models (LLMs) show revolutionary power to create video from just a picture and make the video speak in many languages with real-time interactive translation between the scammer and the victim. And now with Google new VEO 3 video LLM, video is not just good—it is great. Scammers will use these new capabilities to convince the victim they are the ‘person’ they claim to be.
Without strong controls and training, investment and romance scams will grow.
The elephant in the room is the digital platforms and telcos, who do not come close to pulling their weight in the fight against consumer scams (and that is also true for many banks outside the UK). Yes, they are doing some things. But we need bogus investment scam ads and websites taken down quickly. We need policing of consumer marketplaces to remove fraudsters. Dating sites need ‘bank’ level verification of members. Telcos need a better way to prevent scam text messages from getting to consumers. They need to better prevent fraudulent international calls. All banks around the world need to follow the UK example of scam controls and money mule management. These consumer scams are starting to impact bank safety and soundness!
The UK banks and payment service providers have very strong incentives to prevent scam losses from growing and hopefully force a meaningful downturn in the scam loss numbers. And they are succeeding to a degree. But this UK Finance report shows how hard it is without all the affected parties (banks, telcos, digital platforms, governments and the consumer) joining in the fight against what is truly transnational organized crime. Only then can we bend the scam curve down.
