How Tide works with other fintechs to keep you safe

Collaborating to combat financial crime

As part of our Keep Your Business Safe series, we’ve shared blog posts about how you can protect your small business from APP fraud, and how money laundering affects us all. In this blog post, we’re giving you a behind the scenes look at how Tide works with other fintechs to stay on the front foot against financial crime.

Criminals work across financial institutions and borders, and Tide can’t fight financial crime alone. It’s important for us to work with other financial institutions, and one of the ways we do that is through the FinTech Financial Crime Exchange (FFE). “Fintech” – short for financial technology ? – is a term used to describe financial services offered through smart technology (or a company that does this, like Tide).

Becky, our VP Financial Crime, was at the launch of the FFE in New York earlier this month, speaking alongside Monzo and representatives from the U.S. Department of the Treasury and Homeland Security Investigations, about how we collaborate with other fintechs.

On the back of the FFE event in New York, Becky will also be talking to the U.S. Department of the Treasury more broadly about our participation in the FFE and how we collaborate with others.

What is the FFE?

The FFE is a group of 80 fintechs that work together and share information to collectively fight financial crime. Tide has been a member of the FFE since the very beginning, and are proud to have supported the FFE in all 3 countries it exists in (the UK, Netherlands, and most recently the US launch in New York).

Why was the FFE established?

There are a lot of patterns in financial crime, especially the types seen by challenger banking providers – so information sharing between us is incredibly valuable. It’s important for us not to work in isolation, so that we can let others know when we’ve seen something that needs action. This could be a particular merchant or spending pattern that we’ve identified as fraudulent. We share information on trends we see, best practice, and ideas – but not personally identifiable information (PII), such as names, addresses or contact details, as we’re bound by data protection laws.

How else do you work with other partners?

In addition to working with fintechs, we work closely with various law enforcement agencies, anti-fraud bodies, and larger banks. Criminals will seek to exploit all financial institutions, so we work collectively. There’s also lots we can learn from others and we’re always happy to share learnings where we can too.

For example, if someone wants to commit fraud, as we saw in our money laundering blog post, they may need to funnel the money through various accounts in quick succession to hide its illegal origins. So, criminals may choose to target mobile banking providers when looking to open multiple accounts, as it’s quicker and easier than going down to several local high street banks. However, because fintechs are powered by intuitive technology, it’s actually easier to identify, block and report those attempting to commit fraud, and immediately share any relevant information with fellow fintechs via the FFE.

Why does this matter to me, as a Tide member?

We want our members to know how seriously we take our responsibility to combat financial crime. And in the spirit of transparency and information sharing, we wanted to share the ways in which we do it. Whilst we’ve got a whole team dedicated to fighting financial crime at Tide, we also want to contribute to the wider financial industry in combating financial crime.

You can find more information about the FFE here.

You can read more articles from our Keep your Business Safe blog series here.