Authorised push payment scams stripped £450.7 million from UK consumers and businesses in 2024, with investment scams (£144.4m) the single largest category. The bigger shift is in who pays: since 7 October 2024 the UK has moved from simply measuring APP fraud to making payment firms refund it. Reimbursement is now mandatory for most covered scams, the cost is split between the sending and receiving bank, and 88% of covered claim value was paid back in the first year.
The total stolen, the largest scam category, and how the new mandatory reimbursement regime has performed in its first year.
APP fraud losses peaked in 2021 and have fallen every year since, even though the number of scams stayed high. Stronger bank checks, Confirmation of Payee name-checking, and, from late 2024, mandatory reimbursement have all eaten into the totals.
Annual gross losses before reimbursement, in £m. 2021 was the peak year.
| Year | Losses (£m) | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 455.8 | – |
| 2020 | 479.0 | ▲ +5% |
| 2021 | 583.2 | ▲ +22% (peak) |
| 2022 | 485.2 | ▼ -17% |
| 2023 | 459.7 | ▼ -5% |
| 2024 | 450.7 | ▼ -2% |
Total losses are down roughly 23% from the 2021 peak, but APP fraud is not solved. Case numbers stay high, and the money has concentrated into a smaller number of high-value investment scams. The fall reflects better prevention at the moment of payment, not a collapse in scam attempts.
UK Finance breaks APP fraud into scam types. By value, investment and impersonation scams dominate, even though purchase scams are far more common by case count.
Values in £m. “Other” covers CEO fraud, advance-fee and remaining categories.
| Scam type | Loss (£m) | Share of total |
|---|---|---|
| Investment | 144.4 | 32% |
| Impersonation (police/bank) | 101.7 | 23% |
| Purchase | 87.1 | 19% |
| Invoice and mandate | 42.7 | 9% |
| Romance | 30.5 | 7% |
| Other | 44.3 | 10% |
| Total | 450.7 | 100% |
The highest-value scams build trust over time: investment and romance fraud. But for businesses the category to watch is invoice and mandate fraud (£42.7m). These scams do not start with a stolen card or a hacked terminal. They target payment instructions, supplier records and accounts-payable processes: a fake invoice, a "we've changed our bank details" request, or an intercepted supplier email that quietly redirects a genuine payment to a fraudster. The defence is process, not hardware.
Before 7 October 2024, refunds for APP scams were largely governed by a voluntary code, and outcomes varied a lot between banks. Since that date, the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) makes reimbursement mandatory for most covered scams, and splits the cost between the bank that sent the money and the firm that received it.
For a business that pays suppliers by bank transfer, the cap and the exclusions matter: the rules are a real backstop, but not a complete one. How your provider handles fraud controls is worth weighing when you choose where to bank, covered in our business banking guide.
See the full Fraud page →PSR data shows the stolen money lands disproportionately in accounts at smaller payment firms and e-money providers (the firms outside the PSR's largest-firm "directions"). The 50/50 cost split is designed to make those firms fix the gap.
Smaller payment firms and e-money providers (fintechs, e-money institutions and smaller specialists, outside the PSR's largest-firm directions) receive a share of fraud well above the consumer payments they actually handle.
| Measure | Smaller payment firms |
|---|---|
| Share of APP fraud received, by value | 34% |
| Share of APP fraud received, by volume | 48% |
| Share of consumer Faster Payments handled | 19% |
The mismatch between fraud received (34% by value) and payments handled (19%) is the clearest signal of where prevention investment is weakest.
For a business choosing where to hold funds or route customer payments, receiving-firm fraud controls are a real diligence question, not just a consumer-protection footnote.
APP fraud is a shared-liability problem. The receiving firm, where stolen money lands, now carries half the cost, which is reshaping onboarding and monitoring across the fintech sector. For the wider fraud picture across cards and banking, see the UK Payment Fraud Statistics hub.
Every figure on this page maps to one of two primary sources: the UK Finance Annual Fraud Report for loss figures, and the Payment Systems Regulator dashboard for the mandatory reimbursement regime.
| Source | Publisher | Period covered | Type | Last checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Annual Fraud Report | UK Finance | 2024 calendar year | Industry body | 3 Jun 2026 |
| Mandatory APP Reimbursement Dashboard | Payment Systems Regulator | Oct 2024 to Sep 2025 | Regulator | 3 Jun 2026 |
Gross loss figures are from the UK Finance Annual Fraud Report. Reimbursement performance is from the PSR's mandatory-regime dashboard. We never blend the two into a single rate.
The mandatory regime covers UK-to-UK Faster Payments and CHAPS transfers only. International, cryptocurrency and on-us payments are out of scope, and we flag this wherever reimbursement is discussed.
The “Other” scam-type figure is calculated as the residual between named categories and the published total, and is labelled as derived.
Loss figures map to the UK Finance Annual Fraud Report; reimbursement figures to the PSR dashboard. The scam-type “Other” line is a derived residual. Reimbursement-rate differences between sources reflect different scopes and windows and are reconciled in the caveat above. Last full review: 3 Jun 2026.