British banks, tech companies and telecoms are reportedly pledging to increase their data-sharing on fraud. This pledge, as the Financial Times (FT) reported Monday (March 31), comes as the U.K. government is facing calls to show more leadership in helping fight online scammers. According to the report, the companies behind the pledge have transitioned from a testing phase to begin real-time exchanges of fraud indication data — unusual transactions, suspicious URLs — to detect scammers faster

The mobile phone’s increasing penetration into global markets is helping blur the lines between telecom and financial services, where digital banks, and especially neobanks, are moving into communications and mobile payments, and telcos, in turn, are branching more fully into finance. At the end of 2022, PYMNTS Intelligence profiled a trend wherein partnerships with FinTechs or financial institutions (FIs) and telecommunications companies were transforming and boosting financial inclusion in both emerging and industrial economies. The smartphone has been the gateway to access all manner of activities, and PYMNTS surveys showed that more than a quarter of individuals were interested in using banking offerings provided by telecom firms. More recently, the PYMNTS Intelligence report “How the World Does Digital: A Global Benchmark of Consumer Digital Transformation,” which focused on 11 countries, found that the infrastructure for digital banking and telecom is pervasive, as most populations surveyed have access to and use mobile phones