Finansinspektionens brev till EU-kommissionen av den 29 oktober 2025: bekämpning av betalningsbedrägerier kräver åtgärder också utanför banksektorn

Finansinspektionen har tillställt EU-kommissionen ett brev daterat 29.10.2025:

Combating payment fraud requires action also outside the banking sector

Fraud targeting online and mobile banking users has continued to grow for several years, and this trend is causing widespread concern in Finland and many other countries. Losses from fraud and payment instrument crimes in Finland exceeded 100 million euros in 2024. A total of 61,100 cases of fraud and payment instrument crimes were recorded in the police crime report system, accounting for 12.2 % of all crime reports. This development is reflected in the fraud statistics of Finance Finland, the National Bureau of Investigation, and the Bank of Finland.

This topic has been a focus area for the Financial Supervisory Authority FINFSA for several years, and we have conducted thematic reviews on banks in both 2023 and 2025 as part of our supervisory activities. Based on both thematic reviews, the Financial Supervisory Authority issued recommendations to banks for combating fraud and improving security. The actions of credit institutions are extremely important, but broader measures are also needed to prevent the spread of scams.

We would like to bring to your attention that, based on our supervisory activities, we consider it important that social media platforms and search engines will be required to prevent the dissemination of advertisements and links leading to fraudulent and phishing sites on their services. Search engines and social media platforms can help prevent fraud by filtering and removing suspicious content, identifying fraudulent users, blocking the visibility of scam sites promoted through paid means, and sharing information about attempted fraud with their users. Online and telecommunications operators can also offer technical solutions that help detect and prevent fraudulent activity online. Obligating these actors to participate in anti-fraud efforts, alongside banks, is essential to halt the long-standing growth of scams.

We hope you will take our concerns into account and that the Commission will advance the responsibility of social media platforms, search engines and network operators used for the dissemination of scams, so that their actions in combating fraud and scams will be more effective in the future than they are today.