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Facebook parent company Yuan It said on Wednesday it was working with two of Britain's leading banks on information-sharing arrangements to help protect consumers from scams.
Meta said it is expanding its Fraud Intelligence Reciprocal Exchange (FIPE) to enable UK banks to share information directly with the social media giant to help it detect and take down fraudulent accounts and coordinate fraud schemes.
Meta said the technology has been tested with a number of UK lenders. It is provided by British banks NatWest and Metro Bank for people in the UK and US.
According to Meta, NatWest and Metro Bank are currently the only UK banks to join the Fraud Information Sharing Agreement, but more will join later.
“This work has already seen us take action against thousands of accounts operated by fraudsters, demonstrating that banks are and the importance of platforms working together to address this social issue.
“Only if we work together and share information about fraud can we defeat these criminals. Financial institutions can share unique information with us that we can use to train our systems to take action against more fraud globally. What a scam,” Gleicher added.
Meta has long faced calls from UK banks to do more to stop scammers thriving on its platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
In 2022, Starling, a British digital bank backed by Goldman Sachs, began boycotting Meta and pulling ads from its platform over concerns that the company was failing to address fraudulent financial advertising.
Meta's apps are often abused by scammers who try to defraud users of their money through various fraudulent means.
One of the most common forms of fraud users encounter on the company's platform is authorized push payment fraud, where criminals try to convince people to send them money by pretending to be a person or business selling services.
Meta has enacted a policy prohibiting the promotion of financial fraud, such as loan scams and schemes that promise high rates of return. The company also bans ads that promise unrealistic results or guarantee financial returns.