The Global Anti-Scam Summit Europe 2026 took place on the 9th and 10th of June at Convento do Beato in Lisbon, bringing together more than 800 participants from over 460 organisations across government, law enforcement, regulation, financial services, technology, telecoms, consumer protection, academia and civil society. Under the theme Europe Against Scams: Public-Private Partnerships in Action, the Summit focused on how cross-sector cooperation can strengthen scam prevention, disruption, intelligence sharing, enforcement and victim protection.
The programme combined plenary discussions, workshops, working group meetings, sectoral sessions and the Scam Fighter Awards. Workshops led by Bitdefender, Outseer, ScamAdviser, GSE, the Linux Foundation, Visa and Meta examined trusted channels, AI-enabled detection, consumer education, signal sharing, shared defence infrastructure, multi-rail payment risk and industry commitments.
That cross-sector focus reflects how scams now operate. A single scam can begin with a fake advertisement, continue through a messaging app or phone call, move through a payment rail and end with funds routed through mule accounts or cross-border criminal infrastructure. No one organisation sees the full picture. Public-private partnerships are needed because scammers already operate across the boundaries that legitimate institutions often struggle to cross.
Highlights from the Summit, including plenary discussions, workshops, working group meetings, sectoral sessions and the Scam Fighter Awards, are available in the photo gallery.
Public-Private Partnerships Must Reflect the Full Scam Chain
A consistent message across the Summit was that scams cannot be addressed as isolated incidents, consumer mistakes or single-channel fraud events. They move through a chain of digital, financial, telecom and human touchpoints. Prevention therefore needs to be designed around the full scam journey, not only the first contact or the final transaction.
Platforms may see fake accounts, impersonation, scam content or fraudulent advertising. Telecom providers may see number abuse, spoofing or suspicious messaging patterns. Financial institutions may see the payment, the mule account or the unusual transaction behaviour. Law enforcement may see linked criminal networks. Victim support organisations may see the personal and social impact.
A whole-chain approach requires each actor to understand where its role connects to the others. Platforms can reduce exposure to scam infrastructure. Banks can intervene during risky payment journeys and support fund tracing. Telecom providers can help disrupt impersonation channels. Law enforcement can connect cases and coordinate investigations. Consumer organisations can strengthen support, education and victim-centred design.
The value of public-private partnership lies in connecting these roles before harm becomes irreversible. When each sector acts only within its own boundary, scammers can move through the gaps between systems.
Intelligence Sharing Is Moving From Principle to Practice
Intelligence sharing was one of the strongest operational themes at the Summit. The discussions moved beyond general calls for collaboration and focused on how scam signals can be exchanged in ways that are timely, lawful, proportionate and useful.
The Global Signal Exchange was presented as a practical example of this shift. Its workshop, GSE in a Year: Impact Stories and What Is Next, showed how high-confidence scam signals can be shared with partners that are able to act on them. Sessions on fraud risk information sharing and collaborative analytics also pointed to the need for intelligence that works across borders, sectors and payment domains.
This is not simply a matter of sharing more data. Effective intelligence sharing depends on identifying the signals that can help partners act earlier. These may include scam domains, phone numbers, account indicators, behavioural patterns, typologies, infrastructure signals or information about how criminal activity is moving between platforms, telecoms and financial services.
Feedback loops are also essential. If one organisation shares a signal, it should be possible to understand whether that signal supported takedown, further detection, investigation or victim prevention. Without feedback, partnerships risk becoming one-way reporting channels. With feedback, they become learning systems that improve over time.
Enforcement Needs Trusted Public-Private Channels
The enforcement discussions showed that practical cooperation depends on trusted channels between law enforcement, public authorities and private-sector partners. Scam networks move quickly, often across jurisdictions, and enforcement action may require timely information from banks, platforms, telecom providers, registrars and other infrastructure actors.
The Enforcement Working Group focused on how public and private partners can work together on concrete disruption projects. Discussions around Operation Confrontation Ghost highlighted the role of coordinated action, with law enforcement, financial institutions, social media platforms and other partners contributing different capabilities to identify suspects, freeze suspicious activity, close fake accounts, block scam websites and support victims.
This type of cooperation depends on clarity and trust. Private-sector partners are often first to see suspicious activity, while law enforcement has the authority to investigate, connect cases and take formal action. Partners need to know what information is useful, how it will be handled, who can act on it and what outcomes are possible.
Public-private partnerships also help move enforcement upstream. Instead of responding only after individual victims report losses, coordinated disruption can target the infrastructure, accounts, channels and networks that enable repeat harm.
Regulation Can Enable Coordinated Action
The policy and regulator sessions showed that public-private partnerships need clear legal and regulatory conditions to work effectively. Organisations may want to collaborate, but uncertainty around data protection, liability, reporting duties and sector-specific obligations can slow action.
Discussions on European, UK and Australian approaches showed that regulation can do more than impose obligations after harm occurs. It can create the conditions for responsible data sharing, coordinated prevention and clearer accountability across the scam chain.
This matters because scams do not begin and end at the payment stage. A victim may be targeted through a fake advertisement, search result, social media profile, messaging channel or phone call long before a payment is made. If policy focuses only on the final transaction, earlier points of manipulation may remain unaddressed.
Public-private partnerships can help regulators and industry identify these gaps. They can also support more practical approaches to reporting, reimbursement, victim support and cross-sector responsibility. Regulation provides the framework, but partnerships help test whether that framework works in the real scam environment.
Shared Defence Requires Common Infrastructure
Many organisations already invest in detection, authentication, customer monitoring, warnings and investigation support. The larger gap is how these capabilities connect across the ecosystem.
The Linux Foundation’s workshop, Europe Doesn’t Need Another Fraud Tool: It Needs Shared Defense, focused on this infrastructure problem. The discussion around Tazama showed how open-source and shared models can support fraud monitoring in markets where institutions may not have the same resources as larger banks or payment providers. The wider lesson for public-private partnerships is that collaboration needs common rails, not only bilateral relationships.
Shared defence may involve standardised fraud data models, common typologies, privacy-preserving signal exchange, trusted reporting pathways and federated learning. These approaches can help organisations collaborate without exposing unnecessary personal data or weakening privacy protections.
This is particularly important for smaller institutions. Large organisations may have mature fraud teams, advanced analytics and extensive data science capacity, while smaller banks, payment service providers and platforms may not. If intelligence remains fragmented, criminals can exploit the weakest link.
A public-private partnership model can help create a community-level view of scam activity. It allows partners to detect patterns that may not be visible inside one organisation and to act before the same infrastructure, typology or criminal network harms more victims.
AI Is Changing Both Scam Tactics and Detection
The Summit showed that AI is changing both scam operations and scam prevention. Fraudsters are using automation, synthetic content, voice cloning, deepfakes and more adaptive social engineering to make scams faster, cheaper and more convincing.
Outseer’s workshop, Emerging AI Detection and Intervention Techniques in Tackling Scams, focused on the need for defender-side AI that can adapt as fraudsters change tactics. The issue is not only whether AI can detect known patterns, but whether it can help institutions respond to changing behaviour across accounts, devices, transactions and user journeys.
This has clear implications for public-private partnerships. AI-enabled scams do not stay within one platform, bank or communication channel. Detection models therefore need better signals, shared typologies and faster feedback from other parts of the ecosystem.
Trusted Channels Can Become Scam Infrastructure
Bitdefender’s workshop, Trusted Channels, Hidden Threats, highlighted how scammers exploit familiar environments to make fraud appear legitimate. Scams often succeed not because a channel is obscure, but because it is recognisable, trusted or already part of a consumer’s normal digital life.
This creates a public-private partnership challenge. The organisations that operate trusted channels may see signs of abuse before financial loss occurs, while financial institutions may see risk only once a payment is attempted. Telecom providers, platforms, cybersecurity companies, banks and law enforcement therefore need mechanisms to connect early indicators with later-stage harm.
Stronger prevention depends on treating trusted channels as part of the scam chain, not as separate from it.
Payment Risk Needs a Multi-Rail View
Visa’s workshop, Beyond the Blind Spots: Taking a Holistic, Multi-Rail Approach to Risk, showed why scam prevention cannot be limited to one payment channel or product. Victims experience scams as a sequence of events, while institutions often see only the part of the journey that touches their system.
A multi-rail approach matters because criminals can move between payment methods, accounts and channels as controls improve. Fraud prevention therefore needs to look across the customer journey, not only at the final payment instruction.
For public-private partnerships, this means connecting payment intelligence with signals from platforms, telecoms, messaging services and law enforcement. A suspicious payment may be the final visible step in a scam that began much earlier.
Technology Companies Are Building Shared Commitments
Meta’s workshop, Industry Accord in Action, showed how technology companies are developing shared commitments around prevention, cooperation, resilience and public awareness. The Industry Accord Against Online Scams and Fraud reflects an important shift: online scam response is moving from individual platform action towards more consistent cross-industry expectations.
This matters because scam networks do not limit themselves to one platform. They test policies, move accounts, reuse infrastructure and shift users between services. Shared commitments can help create a stronger baseline across the technology sector, while still leaving room for companies to apply controls that fit their own products and risk profiles.
For public-private partnerships, the key is whether these commitments lead to practical cooperation, better signal sharing and faster disruption when scam activity moves across services.
Platforms, Banks and Telecoms Need Complementary Roles
The sectoral discussions showed that platforms, banks and telecoms each hold different parts of the scam picture. The issue is not whether one sector can solve the problem alone, but how each sector’s signals and controls can support the others.
Platforms can act against fake accounts, impersonation, coordinated abuse and fraudulent advertising. Banks can detect unusual transaction behaviour, intervene in risky payment journeys, trace funds and support recovery. Telecom providers can help identify number abuse, spoofing, sender ID misuse and suspicious call or messaging patterns.
These signals become more useful when connected. A bank may not see the grooming that took place before a payment. A platform may not see the financial loss that follows an interaction. A telecom provider may detect suspicious number activity without knowing whether it is linked to scam payments. Law enforcement may see links across cases but need private-sector intelligence to act quickly.
The Summit also showed that collaboration must be operationally realistic. Partners need to manage false positives, privacy requirements, customer friction, appeal routes and evidential standards. Public-private partnerships are useful because they allow these constraints to be understood before fast action is needed.
Consumer Protection Must Be Timely and Specific
The consumer education discussions challenged the idea that awareness alone is enough. Scammers use urgency, authority, fear, intimacy and social pressure in targeted ways. Generic warnings often fail because they do not appear at the moment when a person is under pressure or about to act.
ScamAdviser’s workshop, The (Non)Sense of Consumer Education, focused on this problem directly. The discussion showed that consumer education is most useful when it is specific, timely and connected to real moments of risk. Product design also matters. Friction, prompts, delays, reporting routes and protective tools can help reduce harm when they are applied in the right context.
The Consumer Education Working Group highlighted the role of behavioural science in making prevention more effective. The question is not only what people should know, but when they need to know it and how the warning should be delivered. A broad warning may be ignored. A contextual intervention can help someone pause before harm occurs.
Public-private partnerships are important because consumers encounter scams across different parts of the ecosystem. Banks, platforms, telecom providers, public authorities and consumer organisations all interact with people at different stages of risk.
Victim Protection Must Stay Central
Public-private partnerships often focus on systems, signals and institutional coordination, but the Summit also showed why victim protection must remain central. This was clearest in the Day 2 plenary discussion on scam compounds, which examined the overlap between online scams, organised crime, human trafficking, forced labour and abuse.
Scam ecosystems do not only harm people who lose money. They can also involve people who are trafficked, coerced or forced into criminal activity, creating overlapping forms of victimisation that require more than a technical or enforcement-led response.
This human rights dimension matters for prevention, enforcement and recovery. A purely infrastructure-focused response can miss the people trapped inside criminal operations, as well as the long-term impact on victims of fraud. Victims may experience financial loss, shame, fear, stress, isolation and loss of trust.
Victim-centred design has practical implications. Reporting pathways need to be clear and accessible. Frontline staff need to respond without increasing shame or distress. Recovery processes need to recognise emotional harm as well as financial loss. Prevention measures need to account for the psychological pressure used by scammers.
Public-private partnerships should include these perspectives from the start. A model that disrupts infrastructure but does not improve the victim journey remains incomplete.
Working Groups Turn Partnership Into Practice
The Summit showed that public-private partnerships become more useful when they are linked to defined activity. GASA’s Working Groups provided a structure for moving from shared concern to practical work.
The Research Working Group focused on evidence, scam typologies, victim experiences, scambaiting and emerging risks. The Enforcement Working Group focused on practical cooperation between law enforcement and private-sector partners. The Consumer Education Working Group examined behavioural science, product design and victim support. The Intelligence Sharing Working Group explored data standards, federated learning and telephony intelligence. The Prevention and Intervention Working Group focused on designing fraud out of systems and intervening earlier in the scam journey.
This structure matters because collaboration can otherwise remain abstract. Working groups create space to test ideas, build trust, define outputs and maintain momentum between summits.
Public-private partnerships need this kind of continuity. They cannot rely only on individual events, informal relationships or emergency escalation. They need practical projects, accountable participants and continued engagement.
Partners Reflected the Cross-Sector Model
The Summit was supported by organisations working across technology, cybersecurity, consumer protection, financial services, intelligence sharing and fraud prevention, including Amazon, Bitdefender, Meta, Outseer, ScamAdviser, Visa, Deco Proteste, Euroconsumers, GSE, ThreatFabric, CUBE AI, Feedzai, Google and TrendLife.
Their involvement helped reflect the Summit’s central message: scams cannot be addressed by one sector alone. Effective public-private partnerships depend on bringing together the organisations that see different parts of the scam chain and can act at different points in the victim journey.
Scam Fighter Awards Recognised Excellence
The Scam Fighter Awards recognised excellence across five categories, highlighting initiatives that help prevent, detect, disrupt and respond to scams.
In the Best Awareness Campaign or Educational Programme category, the winner was the UK Financial Conduct Authority for its Firm Checker campaign, which encourages consumers to verify financial firms before investing or borrowing.
The runner-up was S.A.F.E. by Ayleen Charlotte, a victim-centred fraud education programme that equips professionals and first responders with practical tools to better support fraud victims.
In the Best Cross-Sector Collaboration category, the winner was Stop Scams UK for Blocked SIMs, an initiative bringing telecoms, banks, technology platforms, law enforcement and government oversight together to disrupt SIM-enabled scam infrastructure.
The runner-up was Cifas for the International Fraud Data Standard, a framework designed to support lawful, accountable fraud intelligence sharing across sectors and borders.
In the Best Investigation or Research category, the winner was Visa for Visa Scam Disruption, an investigative practice focused on identifying connected scam operations and disrupting large-scale scam activity.
The runner-up was Bitdefender for the Bitdefender Global Scam Intelligence Report 2026, which uses real-world threat data to map scam activity across channels, regions and attack types.
In the Best Policy or Regulatory Initiative category, the winner was Global Fraud Summit 2026, which brought governments, law enforcement, industry and civil society together to strengthen international coordination against fraud.
The runner-up was Cifas for the International Fraud Data Standard, which proposes a scalable model for real-time fraud intelligence sharing.
In the Best Technological Solution category, the winner was Charm Security for its Agentic AI Workforce, which provides capabilities across fraud investigation, customer intervention and intelligence gathering to identify emerging threats.
The runner-up was Salv for Salv Bridge, a real-time intelligence-sharing platform that enables financial institutions to exchange fraud and financial crime information securely and lawfully.
Together, the winners and runner-ups reflected the breadth of excellence across the anti-scam ecosystem, from consumer protection and victim support to intelligence sharing, policy coordination, investigation and technology-enabled disruption. GASA congratulates all winners, runner-ups and nominees for their contribution to the fight against scams.
The Scam Fighter Awards will continue at upcoming GASA summits, including the Global Anti-Scam Summit America 2026 in San Francisco on 2 and 3 September.
What Public-Private Partnerships Need to Deliver
The Global Anti-Scam Summit Europe 2026 demonstrated that public-private partnerships are now a practical requirement in the fight against scams. The question is no longer whether collaboration is needed, but how it can be structured so that it produces faster, safer and more consistent action.
Effective partnerships need clear goals, trusted channels, lawful intelligence sharing, feedback loops, defined roles and measurable outcomes. They also need to recognise the constraints faced by different sectors and the experience of victims. Without these elements, collaboration can remain too slow, too informal or too disconnected from the points where harm occurs.
This work will continue across GASA’s global summit programme, including:
These gatherings will provide further opportunities to build on the public-private partnership discussions in Europe and connect regional approaches to the global fight against scams.
Scammers already operate as networks. The response needs to become more connected, more coordinated and more capable of acting across the full scam chain. Public-private partnerships provide one of the clearest route towards that goal.
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