Pay.UK Launches Pilot of Payments Industry Collaboration to Fight Fraud

Pay.UK has announced it is piloting a new payments industry collaboration to help fight fraud.

As the operator and standards body for the United Kingdom’s (U.K.’s) retail interbank payment systems, Pay.UK aims to bring together data from retail banks and building societies to detect and prevent fraud, the organization said in a Wednesday (June 28) press release.

“To outpace the scammers, we will need to work together, with better collaboration and knowledge sharing,” Kate Frankish, chief business development officer and anti-fraud lead at Pay.UK, said in the release. “That’s why Pay.UK is bringing the payments industry together to share data and resources.”

Currently in pilot form, the initiative aims to build an overlay service that will be offered to payment service providers and will analyze money flows and use predictive intelligence to detect fraud and help prevent crime before it occurs, according to the press release.

Pay.UK has signed contracts with Visa, Synectics Solutions and Featurespace to test the service before deciding on next steps, the release said.

The organization has already worked with banks, payment service providers, suppliers and legal counsel to ensure data is handled securely and legitimately, per the release.

“This announcement is a U.K. first and a major step in the right direction, made possible by Pay.UK’s convening power at the heart of the payments system,” Frankish said in the release.

This news comes shortly after two other announcements of industrywide efforts to combat fraud in the payments industry.

On Tuesday (June 27), fraud prevention firm Sardine said it has launched an independent consortium that will bring together financial institutions and FinTech companies to share data and establish the credentials of senders or receivers of funds for transactions on multiple payment rails.

The consortium, which is dubbed SardineX, welcomes broad industry participation and is open to any organization that initiates or facilitates money movement.

Five days earlier, on Thursday (June 22), Plaid launched an anti-fraud effort that includes a collaborative network called Plaid Beacon.

This network is open to FinTechs, financial institutions of all sizes and Plaid-powered customers and allows them to share information about stolen identities and compromised accounts.