Fraudsters are having more joy in tricking their victims into transferring money, with nearly £260m lost to such scams in the first half of 2025 – a 12% increase compared to the same period last year.

That’s according to UK Finance, a trade association for the British banking industry, which records the cases reported by its members.

Most of the rise comes down to investment scams, according to the association.

Here, the average loss totalled more than £15,000. By contrast, the average loss across all types of authorised push payment fraud (APP) cases was £2,325. 

It was £661 for purchase scams, the most common form of fraud, whereby fraudsters make customers pay for a product or a service they never receive.

Better recovery

On the bright side, the chances of getting some of that money back are increasing: some £160m was returned to victims in the first half of 2025, according to UK Finance – a 24% increase year-on-year, which amounted to nearly two-thirds of all APP losses.

Some of that can likely be traced back to new mandatory APP scam reimbursement rules, taking effect last October.