The Scamdemic: Fighting Fraud at Scale

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Hosted on the Innovation Stage at Pay360 by Fintech Fringe, this panel explored how fintechs, regulators, and financial institutions are confronting the relentless rise in financial crime. With $1.03 trillion lost to fraud in 2023 alone, the stakes have never been higher.

Moderated by Lucy Heavens, VP of Marketing at Salv and the panel featured:

  • Alison Donnelly, Director, Fscom

  • Eleanor Page, Head of Business Development, PayUK

  • Lee Fitzgerald, Fraud Risk Strategy Director, Barclays International, Global Fraud Management


Together, the panel tackled where regulation is working, where it’s falling behind, and how to fight fraud at scale.

Are We Losing the Battle?

While the numbers are sobering, the mood wasn’t defeatist. Alison Donnelly framed the challenge clearly:

“It’s hard to say whether we’re losing the fight... as long as there’s humans, there’s going to be fraud. So what we want to do as a society is move it to a place where consumers are getting better outcomes and we as a society are better protected.” Alison Donnelly, fscom

Eleanor pointed to encouraging stats from PayUK, noting that fraud losses on the Faster Payments rails dropped from £574 million in 2022 to £487 million in 2024. But she cautioned that momentum must continue.

Lee argued we’re not behind, but we’re not ahead either:

"Fraudsters have no rules, no regulation, and no oversight. We do and we are top heavy with regulation in industry." She urged greater protection for businesses, not just consumers.


Shifting Liability, Finding Balance

Alison pointed to international examples, such as Singapore’s shared responsibility model, which distributes liability between banks, telecoms providers, and consumers. She noted that the UK could learn from these models to improve upstream fraud prevention.

Alison also welcomed the Payment Systems Regulator’s move to increase transparency around tech platforms and telcos as potential enablers of scams, referencing calls to “shine a light” on these sectors in earlier sessions.

Lee stressed that reimbursing victims alone is not a solution:

“We are putting all our focus on reimbursing the victim, but the criminal still keeps the money.”

Lee highlighted the need to reframe outcomes so that financial crime is tackled holistically, not just after it happens, but before.

Data Sharing: From Idea to Action

The panel unanimously backed data sharing as the biggest lever we have to prevent fraud, but progress is slow.

“We need a moonshot approach. We sent a spacecraft to the moon in the sixties, surely sharing fraud data isn’t harder than that.”
Lee Fitzgerald, Barclays

Eleanor and Alison both agreed that intelligence sharing, claims data, payments data, and human intelligence must be coordinated across industry and regulators.

What Needs to Happen Next

Looking to the next 12 months, the panel shared three clear actions:

  • Shine a light on telcos and platforms to prevent scams before they start.

  • Build central fraud monitoring capabilities for both sending and receiving PSPs.

  • Create clarity around GDPR to unlock legal data sharing.

The 2030 Vision

Asked what must shift by 2030, the answer was clear: data sharing and global collaboration.

“Fraud doesn’t stop at borders. Why should our prevention efforts?”
Eleanor Page, PayUK

“Criminals don’t operate in silos, so why should we? Fraud, scams, and financial crime are all part of the same problem.”
Lee Fitzgerald, Barclays

Practical Takeaways

  • Regulation must balance consumer and business protection.

  • Fraud prevention starts upstream - with platforms, telcos, and real-time detection.

  • Shared data is key: payment flows, behavioural indicators, and scam typologies.

  • Fraud isn’t local, prevention must be global. The industry needs a universal fraud model