A war of words has broken out between banks and big tech firms over who should be primarily responsible for reimbursing victims of fraud.
The spat comes as UK banks face a new mandate to fully compnesate victims of fraud by up to £85,000.
It also follows an initiative announced last week by Meta that would see it share data with UK banks over fraud.
UK-based challenger bank Revolut said the data-sharing plan falls "woefully short" of what is needed to adress the problem.
“These plans are baby steps, when what the industry really needs is giant leaps forward,” said Revolut’s head of financial crime, Woody Malouf.
“Victims and financial institutions still ultimately bear the cost. These platforms share no responsibility in reimbursing victims, and so they have no incentive to do anything about it. A commitment to data sharing, albeit needed, simply isn’t good enough.”
Malouf referred to Revolut's Consumer Security and Financial Crime Report which found that Meta platforms such as facebook, WhatsApp and Telegram, remain the primary source of scams reported to the company, accounting for 69% of all incidents in the first half of 2024.
The challenger bank has also stated its concern that Meta's data-sharing partnership primarily focuses on financial institutions supplying data to Meta, rather than the company investing more in monitoring its own platforms.
The initiative is also restricted to the UK and while it is a significant problem for UK consumers with £460m lost to APP fraud in 2023, it is a global issue.
In response, Meta has called on Revolut and other banks to sign up to its various collaborative initiatives.
“Fraud is a multi-sector spanning issue that can only be addressed by working collaboratively," stated the big tech firm.
"Our pilot Fraud Intelligence Reciprocal Exchange programme is designed to enable banks to share information so we can work together to protect people using our respective services. We encourage banks including Revolut to join in this effort.”