Ecommpay urges action on social media fraud for children

Ecommpay has urged the government to broaden its response on children and social media to include online fraud that begins on social platforms. The payments company argues that scams targeting young people often start long before any transaction reaches a financial provider.

The intervention followed the Prime Minister's announcement on child safety online. Ecommpay said the public debate has focused too narrowly on harmful content and has not fully addressed how fraudsters reach young users through social media services.

Willem Wellinghoff, chief compliance officer at Ecommpay, said the financial sector regularly deals with the end result of scams that originate elsewhere. By the time a payment is attempted, he said, fraud and deception are often already under way.

"Ecommpay welcomes the Prime Minister's commitment to deliver a 'game-changer' policy on children's safety online. This is an important and overdue moment, and we strongly support any initiative that compels the major tech and social media platforms to take greater responsibility for the welfare of young people on their services.

"From our position in the financial ecosystem, however, we see something that the current debate does not yet fully capture: fraud and scams that eventually land on the financial services sector very often begin not at the point of payment, but far earlier, on social media. Young people are deliberately and systematically targeted by fraudsters and scammers through the very platforms now under scrutiny. By the time a victim reaches a financial transaction, the manipulation and deception have already taken place. The financial services sector is dealing with the consequences of harms that originate elsewhere in the chain.

"This is why we strongly urge government to ensure that the approach to online fraud does not sit solely within financial services regulation. The government's own Fraud Strategy 2026-2029 rightly recognises the need for a system-wide, cross-sector response built on the pillars of disruption, safeguarding and effective enforcement, and we believe that spirit must now be applied directly to the social media environment in which so many fraud journeys begin.

"Protecting children from harmful content and protecting them from financial predators are not separate agendas. We call on government, regulators, the technology sector, society and the financial industry to collaborate far more actively on this issue, because no single sector can solve it alone. The tech giants must be part of that conversation and must be held to the same standards of duty of care that we in financial services are already expected to meet."

Fraud pathway

Ecommpay's position reflects a wider view within financial services that online fraud should be treated as a cross-sector issue rather than one confined to banks, payments groups and other regulated providers. That argument has gained ground as scams increasingly begin through messaging apps, social networks and digital platforms rather than traditional banking channels.

Young people are particularly exposed, Ecommpay said, because social media gives fraudsters direct access to large audiences and allows deceptive approaches to be disguised as ordinary online interaction. The company is calling for social media groups to face a level of accountability similar to that applied to financial firms when harms arise on their services.

The government's fraud strategy, cited by Wellinghoff, sets out disruption, safeguarding and enforcement as central pillars of its approach. Ecommpay said those principles should now be applied more directly to platforms where many scam journeys begin, with greater emphasis on prevention at the point where victims are first targeted.

Sector pressure

The comments also highlight a longstanding tension between the technology and financial sectors over responsibility for fraud losses. Banks and payments companies have often argued that they bear the operational and reputational cost of scams that begin on online platforms, while those platforms face less direct scrutiny for their role in the chain.

For payments companies, that debate matters because fraud often appears only at the end of a longer process of grooming, impersonation or deception. By the time a suspicious payment is identified, the victim may already have been persuaded that the transfer is legitimate, limiting the effectiveness of checks applied only at the payment stage.

Ecommpay, founded in London in 2012, operates in payment processing and acquiring. Its intervention brings a payments provider into a policy discussion that has largely centred on child protection, platform governance and content moderation, while adding financial crime prevention to the agenda.

The company said the two issues should not be treated separately. "The tech giants must be part of that conversation and must be held to the same standards of duty of care that we in financial services are already expected to meet," Wellinghoff said.