A Federal Reserve-backed working group has recommended that the U.S. payments industry establish an independent information exchange framework to serve as a central hub for scam intelligence across all payment channels. This initiative comes as Americans lost more than $12.5 billion to fraud in 2024, a 25% increase from the previous year, according to the Federal Trade Commission.
Currently, U.S. payment stakeholders lack real-time access to shared, industrywide data necessary to combat the growing number of financial scams. To address this, the Fed convened a scams information sharing work group in 2023, enlisting 30 fraud prevention and payments experts.
The group’s newly released recommendations advocate for an information exchange platform that would connect existing and future data sources, offering a comprehensive view of emerging scam threats, tactics, and trends. If supported by industry stakeholders, this exchange would be governed by a coalition or industry-led group, tasked with:
- Defining what scam-related information should be shared
- Developing an engagement strategy for stakeholders
- Identifying gaps in the current fraud prevention landscape
- Prioritizing areas for effective data sharing
The group also recommends a phased implementation approach, starting with basic functionality that enables organizations to share scam insights and trend data. Later phases would introduce receiver account monitoring and the ability to accept scam-related data from multiple participants.