Payment systems operator Pay.UK has announced that its fraud detection and prevention pilot has a 40% increase in detection, potentially saving GBP 112 million yearly. Pay.UK, the non-profit operator of the UK's retail payment systems, along with Visa, Synectics Solutions, and Featurespace, reveals the results of its fraud detection pilot.

The pilot boasts a 40% increase in fraud detection with a 5:1 false positive rate, potentially identifying over GBP 112 million in fraud annually. This initiative tested a novel overlay service enabling UK banks and building societies to analyse financial transactions, using predictive intelligence to preemptively detect and prevent fraudulent activity in a secure manner. A unified solution for UK businesses and consumers The pilot was confirmed in June 2023 when Pay.UK contracted industry partners to test the potential benefits of the service with a group of participating banks and payment service providers (PSPs).

It ran for three months, with each partner receiving historic Faster Payments transactional data from participating banks and PSPs under a data-sharing agreement. Each partner independently built machine learning models which identified suspicious activity and compared it to known fraudulent behaviours. The results show that the new overlay service has been successful in detecting fraudulent activity before it occurs, showing its potential to prevent people and businesses from becoming victims of fraud.

The tool has been designed so that is can be adopted by all PSPs, making it a whole market solution which can protect all people and businesses in the UK from becoming victims of fraud, regardless of who they bank with. Officials from Pay.Uk said the positive results from this pilot demonstrate the importance of innovation and cross-industry collaboration in developing effective solutions to stay ahead of fraudsters and protect people in the ever-changing payments landscape. In 2023, the UK saw 232,429 people falling victim to fraud.

To reduce the scale of the crime that is happening they need a unified approach, and this future service will be a major step forward. The pilot has been tested with the whole market in mind and for the benefit of all end users. Pay.UK will work with the payments industry to share the results more widely, and collaboratively find ways to implement this service for the benefit of everyone in the UK.

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