Tide Pushes For Social Media And Telco Taxes To Prevent Fraud

Business banking platform Tide has asked the government to put a tax on social media and telecoms companies to pay for and train more police officers to fight what it calls the “fraud epidemic” in Britain.

In the UK, fraud has been on the rise in recent years, and scams cost £610 million in the first half of 2017. A lot of this, about £250 million, was because of scams with Approved Authorized Payment (APP).

Last week, the government announced a new plan to fight fraud, which includes adding 400 new inspectors to the National Fraud Strategy.

But Tide says this is “nowhere near enough” to solve the problem. Instead, it wants to put an anti-fraud tax on the value chain to pay for the police force that is needed. Tide says that most scams start on social media and with telecommunications firms. The levy would also help speed up payments.

This would pay for UK law enforcement agencies and make it a requirement for them to examine and prosecute scammers, even if they are based outside of the UK.

The financial services industry has been complaining for a long time that social media and telecommunications companies don’t have to pay victims of financial theft. They want the government’s “Online Harms” bill to include online scams.

Last week, TSB said that 80 percent of fraud cases in the bank’s three biggest fraud groups happen on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

Tide is also asking for a “re-think” of the rules that require financial institutions to pay back all victims of legal fraud and for required data sharing to be made a law.

Tide’s CEO, Oliver Prill, says:

“The target to cut fraud by only 10% by the end of 2024 with another 400 police officers is nowhere near enough to combat the sheer scale of the problem and the damage done. This is why we are calling for a tax to fund action against what has become a terrible blight on the UK.”