Social Media Fuels £221M UK Scam Surge, Industry Wary

Fraudsters no longer have to hack a bank account to take money. A fake investment ad on Instagram or a convincing WhatsApp message can persuade victims to transfer funds themselves.

That pattern is reflected in UK Finance data. Investment scams cost victims across the UK £221.5 million during 2025, a 40% jump from the prior year. Total fraud losses neared £1.3 billion.

Losses from authorised payment scams increased 19%. Fraud involving unauthorised transactions fell 5%.

That situation leaves payment firms trying to halt transfers that their own customers believe are legitimate.

Chet Shah, CEO of Wirex Limited, the UK-regulated payments arm of Wirex, told BeInCrypto a large share of the trouble originates outside the banking system.

The Scam Is Often Over Before the Money Moves

UK Finance reports that 66% of authorised push payment (APP) scam cases originate online. Wirex observed a comparable trend in H1 2026, when social media investment scams became its most frequent fraud type.

“We’re seeing that fraud is moving away from theft and towards deception, and a lot of that comes from investment scams that start on social media, which was the most common type we saw.”

A fake investment offer or a message from someone impersonating a bank employee can establish trust before the money request comes.

Shah noted that some victims push back against fraud teams because they believe they are not being deceived.

“The victim then authorises the payment willingly, often defending the decision if FinCrime teams question it.”

At that stage, stopping the transfer becomes far more difficult.

“That’s what makes it harder for a firm like Wirex to stop: by the time a payment instruction reaches us, the persuasion has already happened somewhere else, and the victim is snared.”

Victims span all age groups. Wirex’s youngest potential victim was 20 and its oldest 82. Suspected fraudsters ranged from 18 to 86.

“This isn’t a young person’s crime anymore, and mule recruitment isn’t either.”

Shah believes AI may be helping criminals test new messages and scale successful ones, though he says Wirex cannot confirm that.

Social Platforms Host the Scam. Banks Pay for It

Shah argues that the responsibility to stop these deceptions falls too heavily on payment processors.

Under UK rules that took effect on October 7, 2024, eligible APP scam victims using Faster Payments and CHAPS can be reimbursed up to £85,000 per claim. The sending and receiving payment firms generally split that cost equally.

Yet the scam may have originated on a completely different company's platform.

“Even if we’ve done everything possible to inform the customer it’s a scam, the big tech social media companies face no implications, giving them no incentive to stop it. In fact, these platforms profit from scam adverts, reach and engagement that allow fraud to spread.”

Regulators are mulling changes. In July 2026, Ofcom released draft codes with nearly 40 proposed measures to combat fraudulent ads on social media, search engines and video platforms.

The consultation closed October 2. A final decision is expected in mid-2027, with parliamentary approval still needed afterward.

Seven Million Payments, and the Ones Wirex Stopped

Wirex’s H1 2026 Transparency Report covers more than 7 million transactions valued at roughly £600 million from January through June.

According to the company, it prevented £442,149 in potential scam losses via 238 interventions, blocked another £225,000 in suspected criminal funds and filed 183 Suspicious Activity Reports with the National Crime Agency.

Those numbers reflect what the firm says it intercepted. They do not show how much fraud went undetected, making it hard to gauge success from the headline totals alone.

Wirex says 246 prevention rules were active at any point during the period. It is also deploying AI to link suspicious behaviour across large data sets.

Shah described how the technology exposed a criminal network that initially seemed local.

“We spotted mule-like activity in a customer segment, which, on its own, looked like a regional issue. Using AI-assisted analysis to process account and transaction data at scale, we found the same behaviour running across borders. An analyst reviewing cases one at a time may not have connected the dots on this so quickly, but we turned this into a permanent detection rule.”

Wirex says analysts still make the final decisions. The firm plans to launch Sentinel, an AI-assisted anti-money-laundering case review tool, and Tradecraft, a system that trains analysts using AI-generated scam scenarios.

When Your Bank Freezes the Wrong Person

Fraud checks create another issue. A frozen account can halt a criminal, but it can also leave an innocent customer unable to access needed funds.

Shah acknowledged that Wirex has made incorrect calls in some cases, including disputes that reached the Financial Ombudsman Service.

“What we’ve learned is that a freeze is not a neutral, risk-free action just because it’s cautious. Sometimes we get that decision wrong: we’re too slow to freeze, and the money’s gone, or we freeze a legitimate customer’s funds and cause real harm, even to someone who was already vulnerable.”

For Shah, how quickly a company resolves such cases matters as much as the original decision.

“A frozen account with no explanation is one of the most distressing things that can happen to someone, especially if they’re relying on that money. We’ve learned that the speed of resolution matters almost as much as the accuracy of the original decision, and that being upfront early — even with limited information — reduces harm even when the freeze itself was justified.”

Wirex reported that complaints dropped 42% and Ombudsman referrals fell 67% in H1 2026 versus H2 2025. Those figures do not erase individual mistakes.

The Number Wirex Wants to See Fall

Shah argues that fraud prevention should be gauged by customer outcomes. A compliance check alone may miss wrongful freezes and undetected scams.

“Compliance tells you whether you’ve built the controls. It doesn’t tell you whether they’re working. You can pass an audit with a well-documented framework and still be letting scams through, or freezing the wrong people’s money. So the question we ask ourselves is: what actually happened to the customer?”

Suspicious Activity Reports at Wirex fell by a quarter in the first half. Shah says the priority is making reports useful to investigators rather than boosting their count.

He also wants to shorten the time between spotting a new scam pattern and implementing a detection rule.

Shah even hopes the £442,149 saved from scams eventually declines.

“In all honesty, I’d like that number to come down; not because we’ve got worse at catching it, but because less of it is reaching us in the first place. That depends on better prevention upstream and on real consequences for the platforms where these scams start. What I want to go up is the proportion we stop of whatever does reach us.”

His point is that stopping scams earlier would protect people before a payment reaches the bank.

For now, payment companies are left making the final call, often after scammers have already won the victim’s trust.