The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group, together with the Bank of Thailand, presented a framework for tackling fraud in digital financial services at their 2026 annual meetings in Bangkok. The Bangkok Blueprint sets out 12 considerations across five pillars. These are legal foundations, prevention and detection, supervisory and enforcement tools, domestic and cross-border cooperation, and consumer protection. It is a non-binding guide that each country can adapt.
What it means: Fraud through calls, messages and fake websites has become the biggest problem in digital payments, and the fact that the IMF and World Bank treat it as a financial stability issue says a lot. The guide is not law, but texts like this often shape what national regulators ask for later. In Europe many of its elements are already under discussion: the Payment Services Regulation foresees name and IBAN matching checks, fraud data sharing between providers and, in some cases, liability to refund victims of impersonation scams. For Greek banks and payment providers, the message is that fraud protection will increasingly be judged as an obligation rather than an option. AI transaction monitoring, quick freezing of suspicious funds and cooperation with telecoms operators and platforms are the core tools. For SMEs, fake invoices and supplier IBAN change scams remain the biggest risk, and confirming every change of bank details through a second channel is a simple but effective defence.
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