The UK Marketplace Fraud Index 2026

1 — What are the headline UK marketplace fraud losses in 2026?

UK marketplace fraud losses are measured in billions, not millions. UK Finance confirmed £1.17 billion lost to payment fraud in 2023 — purchase scams, the category covering marketplace fraud, represented the highest APP fraud category by case volume.

The figures below represent the most widely cited datapoints in UK consumer finance, Parliament and regulatory submissions. Each is linked to its primary source publication.

£160,000 stolen on Facebook Marketplace every day

TSB’s internal purchase-fraud caseload, extrapolated across the UK Faster Payments population. At this rate, Facebook Marketplace losses alone exceed £58 million per year — from a single consumer platform. Source: TSB(2025)

£1.17 billion lost to UK payment fraud in 2023

Combined unauthorised fraud (£708.7m) and authorised push payment fraud (£459.7m) across UK retail banking. Purchase scams were the largest APP subcategory by volume — the overwhelming majority tied to marketplace platforms. Source: UK Finance Annual Fraud Report 2024(UK Finance, 2024)

£459.7 million lost to APP fraud in 2023

Authorised push payment fraud — where the victim authorises the transfer themselves — covers marketplace purchase scams, romance fraud, investment fraud and impersonation. Purchase scams dominate by case count. Source: UK Finance Annual Fraud Report 2024(UK Finance, 2024)

Highest fraud case volume ever recorded by Cifas in 2023

Cifas’s National Fraud Database hit its highest annual case volume ever in 2023, with the upward trend continuing into 2024. Marketplace purchase fraud is a significant contributor to first-party and third-party cases filed by member organisations. Source: Cifas Fraudscape 2024(Cifas, 2024)

2 — How does UK marketplace fraud break down by platform?

Facebook Marketplace is the single dominant attack surface, accounting for 73% of UK purchase fraud by platform origin (TSB, 2025). Vinted is second; Depop, Gumtree and eBay follow. The concentration reflects Facebook Marketplace’s scale — over 10 million UK monthly users — and its frictionless stranger-to-stranger design.

Platform risk comparison

73% of UK purchase fraud starts on Facebook Marketplace

Across TSB’s entire purchase-fraud caseload, almost three-quarters of cases were traced to a Facebook Marketplace listing. No other consumer platform comes close in TSB’s dataset. Source: TSB(2025)

50,000+ Vinted accounts banned for fraud-related activity in 2024

Vinted’s 2024 trust-and-safety enforcement removed more than 50,000 accounts, cited widely in UK consumer-affairs coverage and Cifas fraud intelligence briefings. The platform’s rapid UK growth has made it an increasingly attractive target. Source: Cifas / Vinted Trust & Safety(2024)

Vinted and Depop are Starling Bank’s highest-risk second-hand platforms

Starling Bank’s consumer-facing fraud guidance singles out Vinted and Depop as the highest-risk platforms its UK customers regularly transact on, ahead of Facebook Marketplace. Source: Starling Bank

3 — Which payment methods drive the highest UK marketplace fraud losses?

Payment method is the single strongest predictor of whether a marketplace scam victim will recover any money. Faster Payments bank transfer and PayPal Friends & Family together account for the overwhelming majority of irrecoverable UK marketplace fraud losses.

Both methods share a fatal characteristic: no in-built recourse. Once a Faster Payment lands in a beneficiary account, the sending bank cannot unilaterally reverse it. PayPal F&F explicitly excludes both buyer and seller protection. The structural implication is that the only effective protection is prevention — escrow or verified-identity payment — not recovery.

Payment method risk matrix

4 — Who is most at risk from UK marketplace fraud?

37% of UK adults have been scammed on an online marketplace (Experian) and 1 in 3 UK buyers report being scammed on a second-hand platform (Which?, 2024). Buyers bear the majority of losses, but 22% of UK marketplace sellers also report being victimised.

The demographic spread is broader than most people assume. Marketplace fraud is not primarily a “tech-naive elderly” problem — millennials are disproportionately exposed because they transact most frequently on these platforms. Young male users are over-represented in car, electronics and gaming-hardware fraud categories. Women are disproportionately affected by fashion and clothing platform scams, particularly Vinted and Depop.

37% of UK adults have been scammed on an online marketplace

Experian UK consumer-survey data on lifetime exposure across UK adults who regularly use online marketplaces. A figure that has increased year-on-year across Experian’s tracker surveys. Source: Experian

1 in 3 UK buyers scammed on second-hand marketplaces

Which? Money’s 2024 investigation surveying UK adults who had made a purchase through a second-hand marketplace in the prior 12 months. Source: Which?(Which?, 2024)

22% of UK marketplace sellers report being scammed

Seller-side exposure from the same Which? investigation: more than one in five UK sellers say a buyer has defrauded them — through chargebacks, fake-collection claims, or counterfeit-item return fraud. Source: Which?(Which?, 2024)

5 — What are the actual recovery rates for UK marketplace fraud victims?

18% of UK fraud victims fully recover their money (Cifas). The October 2024 mandatory APP reimbursement rules from the Payment Systems Regulator represent a significant improvement — up to £85,000 per claim — but banks may reject claims where the consumer ignored a specific warning or failed to take reasonable precautions.

Recovery is the single biggest gap between regulatory intent and consumer reality. The PSR’s “consumer standard of caution” exception is broad enough that marketplace victims who transferred money despite bank warnings, or who used PayPal F&F knowingly, may be left without recourse. The practical implication: documented, in-app safety prompts (such as those embedded in SilentID’s PIN Pickup flow) create a contemporaneous record that supports reimbursement claims.

18% of UK fraud victims fully recover their money

The most widely cited UK fraud-recovery statistic. Cifas’s consumer-survey data is referenced by TSB, Santander, the FCA and Parliament in debates on mandatory reimbursement. It predates the October 2024 PSR rules and may improve in 2026 reporting. Source: Cifas

£85,000 maximum reimbursement under APP rules (October 2024)

Since 7 October 2024, UK Faster Payments and CHAPS providers must reimburse eligible APP-fraud victims up to £85,000 per claim, split 50:50 between the sending and receiving payment service providers. Marketplace purchase fraud is explicitly in scope, subject to the consumer-standard-of-caution exception. Source: Payment Systems Regulator(PSR, 7 October 2024)

Faster Payments cannot be recalled once sent

The UK Faster Payments scheme has no inbuilt recall mechanism. Once a payment clears into a beneficiary account (usually within seconds), the sending bank cannot unilaterally reverse it. This is the structural reason marketplace bank-transfer fraud is so difficult to undo — even with APP reimbursement rules. Source: Pay.UK / UK Finance

6 — How are UK banks responding to marketplace fraud?

UK retail banks have shifted from passive monitoring to active payment blocking. Santander UK protected over 1,800 customers from suspected Facebook Marketplace fraud in 2025 by blocking or challenging Faster Payments to high-risk recipients. TSB has been the most vocal bank on the issue, publishing the £160,000-per-day figure cited by national media and Parliament.

The shift reflects both increased fraud volumes and the PSR’s new 50:50 liability split for APP fraud (October 2024), which creates strong financial incentives for sending banks to intervene before the payment clears. Real-time payment-purpose interrogation, device-fingerprint analysis and recipient-behaviour profiling are now standard tools in UK retail banking fraud-prevention stacks.

1,800+ Santander customers protected from Facebook Marketplace fraud in 2025

Santander’s automated payment-screening system blocked or challenged Faster Payments to suspected Facebook Marketplace sellers, protecting more than 1,800 customers from probable fraud losses in 2025 alone. Source: Santander UK(Santander UK, 2025)

TSB publishes the £160,000/day figure as a deliberate public-pressure tactic

TSB has been the most-vocal UK retail bank on Facebook Marketplace fraud, intentionally publishing precise daily loss figures to put pressure on Meta to introduce identity-verification requirements for marketplace sellers. Source: TSB

7 — Summary statistics at a glance

All nine headline figures from this index, sourced and ready to cite.

8 — Methodology and data sourcing

Every figure in this index is drawn from a named primary source — a published report, press release or consumer survey from TSB, UK Finance, Cifas, Action Fraud, Which?, Experian, Santander or the Payment Systems Regulator. We do not commission proprietary surveys; this index is a curated, cited compilation of publicly available UK fraud data.

Where a figure originates in a media briefing rather than a published URL (for example, certain TSB press statements), we link to the publishing organisation rather than a specific document URL. Where Cifas data is cited, it refers to Cifas’s Fraudscape annual report or consumer-survey data published on the Cifas website.

This index is published under CC-BY 4.0. Re-use freely with attribution to silentid.co.uk/research/uk-marketplace-fraud-index-2026.

Related research and guides

Research papers

• PIN Pickup vs Bank Transfer: Why UK Marketplace Pickups Need Escrow
• How UK Banks Started Blocking Marketplace Fraud (2025–2026)
• Why 50,000 Vinted Bans Should Worry Every UK Reseller
• A Taxonomy of UK Marketplace Scam Patterns 2026
• UK Marketplace Fraud Statistics 2026 — Sourced Data

Guides

• Safe Payment for Marketplace Pickups — PIN Pickup
• Free UK Scam Checker — Safety Check
• Trust Passport — Portable Seller Reputation