FNA’s National Anti-Scam Utility wins Best Financial Crime Prevention Initiative at the PAY360 Awards 2026
London, 15 October 2026. FNA has won Best Financial Crime Prevention Initiative at the PAY360 Awards 2026 for its National Anti-Scam Utility (NASU). The awards were presented at Grosvenor House, London, on 7 October.
The PAY360 Awards are run by The Payments Association, and 2026 is their 20th year. The awards recognise excellence across the payments industry. This year, 88 companies made the shortlist.
APP fraud losses show why scams need a joined-up response
Scams are one of the fastest-growing financial crimes. UK losses to authorised push payment (APP) fraud rose 19% in 2025 to £576.4 million, according to UK Finance’s Annual Fraud Report 2026. In APP fraud, criminals trick victims into sending them money, and it now makes up 32% of all payment fraud losses. Investment scams alone cost victims £221.5 million, up 40% on the year before.
The problem is global. The Global Anti-Scam Alliance surveyed 46,000 adults across 42 markets and found that 57% had encountered a scam in the past 12 months. Almost one in four (23%) had lost money.
Behind these figures are people who lose savings, pensions, and confidence in the financial system. Criminals also use scam proceeds to fund wider organised crime. A single scam passes through several institutions, but each bank sees only its own part of the money trail. Because of this fragmented view, stolen money is hard to trace and harder still to recover.
How a national anti-fraud network traces and recovers stolen funds
A National Anti-Scam Utility is a country-level platform that connects banks, payment service providers, law enforcement, and regulators. Through it, they can trace stolen funds across institutions and freeze those funds before they leave the financial system. NASU connects the institutions that a scam passes through and gives each of them the same end-to-end view of the money trail.
The results are measurable. In Malaysia, FNA’s platform supports the National Scam Response Centre (NSRC). There, 48 financial institutions have handled more than 100,000 fraud cases, and the share of scam funds frozen has risen from 0.5% to 21.4%.
The judges called NASU “a genuine structural solution to a structural problem”. They pointed to NASU’s recovery outcomes and the benefits it brings to wider society.
“Scams are a network problem, and you can’t solve a network problem one bank at a time. NASU gives institutions a shared view of where stolen money goes, so they can act together and get more of it back to victims. We’re grateful to the judges for this recognition, and to the partners who have built NASU with us,” said Kimmo Soramäki, Founder and CEO, FNA.
We’d like to thank The Payments Association, the judging panel, and our partners, and to congratulate all of this year’s finalists.
