Tech giants urged to join fight against soaring scam ads in UK

Social media giants are being urged to join the fight against the soaring number of scam ads in the UK and to pay their fair share in combatting online fraud. The call comes ahead of the Government’s National Fraud Strategy, set to be published imminently.

The Payments Association (TPA), wants a Home Office-led overhaul of how online fraud is fought in the UK and set out the sector’s view on the way forward and how to take action at its PAY360 event in London this month.

Scam ads use AI tools to impersonate trusted brands and exploit social media algorithms to appear at the top of shoppers’ search results.  They offer fake products or services to steal money or personal data.

Recent years have seen a surge in scam ads on sites like X, Facebook and Instagram.  It is estimated that UK shoppers see an average of 185 scam ads a month.

The Payments Association wants a fairer regulatory framework for fighting online fraud.  While social media platforms generate revenue from all advertising, real and fake, it is financial institutions that bear the brunt of combatting the crime. 

Consumers conned by fake adverts lose money individually, and the total impact is adding up.  According to recent data from Juniper Research, UK shoppers lost £44 million to fake ad scams in 2025 – that figure is set to rise to £84 million by 2030.

The fraud is called Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud because consumers are conned into voluntarily handing over their money.  

Tougher consumer protection regulations have seen a mandatory reimbursement threshold for APP fraud imposed in October 2024 and payment service providers have reimbursed 87% of all scam-related losses since this was implemented.

But social media giants, where fraud originates, pay nothing to reimburse shoppers who become victims of crime on their platforms. 

It is estimated that social media platforms generated £3.8bn in revenue from scam ads in 2025, roughly ten per cent of all social media ad revenue.  Advertising on social media is set to grow by 120 per cent in the next five years to be worth £84bn by 2030.

Last month The Payments Association published its manifesto for 2026, called Making Britain a Payments Powerhouse.

It outlined plans for the Home Office to draw up a new “shared responsibility framework” which would see liability for economic crime “shared proportionately amongst stakeholders based on origination data”. 

The UK is a major target of scam ads.  In 2025 alone it is estimated to account for 95 billion scam ad impressions – this figure is set to rise to 137 billion by 2030.

Riccardo Tordera Ricchi, TPA Vice President – Policy and Government Relations, said: “Payment firms are expected to stop fraud at the point money is transferred when the real crime has been committed upstream – through digital communication and scam advertising. 

“It cannot be right that while social media platforms benefit from the revenue generated by online fraud, consumers and payment firms are left to pick up the bill for that crime.”

The Payments Association wants Ministers to tighten Britain’s National Fraud Strategy (of which a major update is due imminently)  by extending the Economic Crime Levy to both social media and telecoms companies.

The levy is a government charge imposed on more than 4,000 businesses regulated under Anti-Money Laundering laws.

Depending on their size, companies pay a flat annual fee – ranging from £10m to £1bn – to fund initiatives to combat money laundering and economic crime.  From next month (April) thousands of larger firms will face substantial increases in the fee.

At its PAY360 event this month, The Payments Association will publish a paper also calling on social media giants to do more to detect and prevent online fraud. 

It wants big tech and telecoms firms to sign up to the Online Fraud Charter, improve fraud detection protocols and strengthen verification of online advertisers.

The Association is also calling for new legislation to allow for better data sharing across industries and the creation of a new UK Digital Payments Fraud Centre – an independent hub that uses AI to detect fraud trends and co-ordinate responses across payments, telecoms, e-commerce and law enforcement. 

Chancellor Rachel Reeves last year signalled the Government was considering a greater role for tech and telecommunications firms in battling fraud.