Where to Report a Scam in the UK (2026 Update)

The short answer

The UK's official reporting routes in 2026 are: Report Fraud at reportfraud.police.uk or 0300 123 2040 (replaced Action Fraud on 4 December 2025); the National Cyber Security Centre for phishing emails (report@phishing.gov.uk) and suspicious texts (forward to 7726); the FCA's ScamSmart for investment fraud; Police Scotland on 101 if you are in Scotland; and 999 if you are in immediate danger. Crucially, since 7 October 2024 UK banks are required under the PSR's mandatory reimbursement rule to refund APP fraud victims up to £85,000 per claim — usually within five business days. That is the single biggest improvement in UK scam recovery in a decade, and the recovery odds in the UK are now meaningfully better than they are in the US.

"Report Fraud is a complete redesign of the way the public report fraud and cyber crime to the police. The new service will deliver an improved experience for victims and provide our investigators with the intelligence they need to bring offenders to justice."
— City of London Police, announcing the launch of Report Fraud as the replacement for Action Fraud, 4 December 2025. Action Fraud had faced years of public criticism, including reports that the vast majority of cases were closed without police follow-up.

If you have been scammed in the UK, two things matter most in the first 24 hours: stopping any further loss and creating a contemporaneous record. The reporting and refund machinery downstream of that point has been substantially redesigned in 2024-2025, and using the right route at the right time is the difference between a refund and a "case closed without action" email a fortnight later. Here is the actual current map.

If you are reading this with a recent transaction you regret, skip to If money has already moved. The first hour is the only window where bank-side reversals reliably work.

The big change: PSR mandatory reimbursement (since 7 October 2024)

This is the most important paragraph in this entire piece, so read it twice.

On 7 October 2024 the UK Payment Systems Regulator's mandatory reimbursement rule came into force. The rule requires UK payment service providers — your bank or building society — to reimburse victims of Authorised Push Payment fraud (the formal name for "you sent the money yourself because the scammer deceived you") on transfers made over Faster Payments or CHAPS. The cost is shared 50/50 between the sending and receiving banks, which is the structural innovation that finally makes the receiving bank care about scam accounts.

—Who is covered. Consumers, micro-enterprises (under 10 employees), and charities. Larger businesses are not covered.

—The reimbursement cap. Up to £85,000 per claim. (Originally proposed at £415,000; lowered in the September 2024 final rule.)

—The excess. Sending banks may charge up to £100 per claim. No excess applies if you are classified as a vulnerable consumer.

—The timeframe. Your bank must refund within five business days, or within 35 days if the case requires more investigation. They cannot indefinitely 'investigate' you out of a refund.

—What rails it covers. Faster Payments and CHAPS — the two main UK bank-to-bank payment rails. Card payments are not covered (those have separate Section 75 and chargeback protections).

This is the structural fix that the US still does not have. Cash App and Zelle victims in the US run into the Regulation E gap that excludes "authorized under deception" transfers from required refunds — that gap is what we covered in the Cash App piece and the Zelle piece. The UK's PSR rule closes exactly that gap on UK rails. If you are scammed in the UK after 7 October 2024 via a Faster Payments or CHAPS transfer, your recovery odds are dramatically higher than they were a year earlier — and dramatically higher than equivalent US victims today.

The new front door: Report Fraud (since 4 December 2025)

Action Fraud was the UK's national fraud-reporting service for over a decade. It was also widely criticised. A Times investigation found that the vast majority of reports were closed without any police follow-up. It was, as one parliamentary committee put it, "not fit for purpose." On 4 December 2025 it was retired.

The replacement is called Report Fraud, run by City of London Police (the national lead force for fraud), with a public-facing launch in January 2026. The new service has:

—A new online reporting tool. At reportfraud.police.uk. Designed from scratch on victim feedback. Routes serious cases to local forces and feeds intelligence into the National Crime Analysis Service.

—A phone line. 0300 123 2040. Staffed by the new Report Fraud Contact Centre.

—A new backend analysis service. The Report Fraud National Crime Analysis Service (N-CAS) replaces the previous National Fraud Intelligence Bureau systems.

—A redirect from the old Action Fraud URL. If you go to the old Action Fraud site, you are automatically forwarded to Report Fraud. The change is invisible to anyone searching the old way.

—No coverage in Scotland. Scotland uses Police Scotland on 101 for non-emergency fraud reports. The 999 emergency line works UK-wide for immediate-danger situations.

Whether Report Fraud actually delivers on the redesign promise will be measurable over 2026. Critics of Action Fraud point out that the underlying problem — police forces lacking capacity to investigate volume fraud — has not been fundamentally solved by renaming the front door. What is unambiguously true is that the reporting URL has changed, and any guide telling you to use "actionfraud.police.uk" is out of date.

The full UK reporting directory, by scam type

Different scam types route to different agencies. Using the right one matters more than reporting to all of them.

—Any fraud or cybercrime where you have lost money. Report Fraud at reportfraud.police.uk or 0300 123 2040 (England/Wales/NI). Police Scotland on 101 (Scotland). For immediate danger, 999.

—A suspicious email. Forward to report@phishing.gov.uk (NCSC). The Suspicious Email Reporting Service has analysed many millions of emails and removed millions of malicious URLs since launch.

—A suspicious text message. Forward to 7726 (free; spells ‘SPAM’ on a keypad). Your mobile network operator routes these to NCSC and to action against the sender’s number. Not sure if a text is fake? Run it through the UK scam-text checker first.

—Investment scams (crypto, fake brokers, pension scams). FCA ScamSmart at fca.org.uk/scamsmart. Check the FCA Warning List before investing. Report unauthorised firms targeting UK consumers via the FCA's consumer helpline on 0800 111 6768.

—A bank, card, or payment-app dispute the firm refuses to resolve. Financial Ombudsman Service at financial-ombudsman.org.uk or 0800 023 4567. Free, independent, binding on the firm if they rule in your favour.

—Identity theft. Cifas runs the UK protective registration service at cifas.org.uk. Report to Report Fraud for the criminal-side investigation, and consider a Cifas Protective Registration to flag your name to banks for additional checks.

—A scam you spotted but did not lose money to. Still report it — to Report Fraud, NCSC for phishing emails/texts, and the FCA for investment scams. Reports without losses still build the intelligence picture that targets the scammers.

—A scam involving children or minors. If a child is in danger or being exploited online, contact the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command (CEOP) via ceop.police.uk. For grooming or abuse, also call NSPCC on 0808 800 5000.

If money has already moved: the first 24 hours

Speed is the entire game. Bank-side reversals only work in the first hour or two; the PSR rule kicks in once the bank is formally notified. The sequence below is the maximum-recovery order:

1Call your bank's fraud line on the back of your card immediately. Not general customer service. State exactly: "I am the victim of fraud and want to dispute the transaction." If the scam happened on or after 7 October 2024 and the payment went via Faster Payments or CHAPS, explicitly say you are making an APP fraud claim under the PSR mandatory reimbursement rule. Get a written reference number.

2Report it to Report Fraud at reportfraud.police.uk or 0300 123 2040 (England, Wales, Northern Ireland). In Scotland, call Police Scotland on 101. You get a crime reference number; keep it — your bank may ask for it during the claim.

3Document everything in one place. Screenshot the conversation, the scammer's phone numbers or emails, any URLs or fake websites, the transaction details (date, time, amount, recipient name and sort code/account), and any names the scammer used. Save it as a single PDF.

4Forward any phishing email to report@phishing.gov.uk and any phishing text to 7726. These feed the NCSC takedown machinery and may shut down the operation before the next victim.

5If the scam involved investments, also use the FCA ScamSmart service at fca.org.uk/scamsmart. Check the Warning List for the firm name, and report unauthorised firms.

6Block the scammer on every channel and do not engage further. Any 'follow-up' contact — including offers to help recover the money — is the second scam. We covered the full pattern in the recovery-scams piece.

7If your bank denies the APP fraud claim after their internal investigation, escalate to the Financial Ombudsman Service at financial-ombudsman.org.uk. The service is free, independent, and binding on the firm if they rule in your favour. Wait until you have the bank's final decision letter before filing.

8Talk to Citizens Advice if you want a second human opinion. citizensadvice.org.uk or 0808 250 5050. Free, independent consumer guidance from real humans.

Within days of any public report or social-media post about your loss, "recovery scammers" will find you. They will claim to be from a law firm, a recovery service, or even from Report Fraud or the FCA themselves. Real UK recovery channels — your bank, Report Fraud, the FCA, the Financial Ombudsman — never charge an upfront fee. Real police and regulators never cold-call victims demanding payment. See the recovery-scams piece for the pattern and the honest recovery odds by payment method for what actually works.

The UK numbers, for context

UK Finance's Annual Fraud Report 2025 covers the most recent complete year. The headline figures, all from named-agency data:

—Total UK fraud losses 2024: about £1.2 billion. Split roughly £722 million in unauthorised fraud (where the consumer did not initiate) and £450.7 million in authorised push payment fraud (where the consumer initiated under deception).

—APP fraud losses fell 2% YoY. From £459M to £450.7M, with case counts falling 20% to under 186,000. The fall is associated with the run-up to the PSR rule taking effect, as banks tightened pre-rule.

—Investment fraud rose 34%. To £144.4 million. Investment-related scams continue to grow faster than other categories — the same pattern we are seeing in the US.

—Purchase scams remain the most common APP type. £87.1 million in losses; victims paying in advance for goods or services that never arrive. Most originate on Facebook Marketplace, eBay, Gumtree, and similar.

—The industry blocked £1.45 billion. Up 16% YoY. The fraud you see in the headlines is the fraction the banks did not catch.

The PSR's mandatory reimbursement rule means a larger share of the £450.7 million APP figure will be returned to victims going forward than was returned in previous years. That makes the UK, for now, the rare jurisdiction where the consumer-protection floor on P2P scams is meaningfully higher than the equivalent floor in the US.

The habits that keep you out of the reporting machinery entirely

Reporting is downstream. Prevention is upstream, and three small habits stop most UK scams cold:

—Never authorize a Faster Payments or bank transfer based on a phone call you did not initiate. Real banks, the police, the HMRC, and the DVLA do not call out of the blue demanding payment by bank transfer. Hang up. Call the institution back on the number on the back of your card or from their website.

—Use Confirmation of Payee for every new payment. Since 2020, UK banks have offered Confirmation of Payee — the system that checks the name you typed against the name on the destination account. Use it. A 'no match' or 'close match' result is a refusal to proceed, not a 'try anyway.'

—Treat any messaging-app financial conversation as hostile until verified. Family imposter scams, recruiter scams, romance baiting, and investment scams in the UK overwhelmingly run on WhatsApp, Telegram, Instagram DMs, and Facebook Messenger. The pivot off a verifiable platform onto a messaging app is the single most reliable scam signal.

If you have already started down a path and you are unsure whether it is a scam, the cheapest and fastest second opinion is the Scam Checker on this site, or our free case review. Both are read by a human and respond within 24 hours.

From the field. The single most common UK case we see in 2026 is a Faster Payments transfer made after a phone call from someone claiming to be from the victim's bank's fraud department. The script is always the same: there is "suspicious activity" on the account; to keep the money safe, transfer it to a "secure holding account" the agent will guide you to set up. Every word of it is a lie, and the structure of the script has been used unchanged for years. The 2026 update is that under the PSR rule, victims of this scam now have a clear statutory path to reimbursement on the bank side — and that is changing how often the scam succeeds, because banks are now incentivised to interrupt these transfers in real time.

One rule, end to end

If you take one habit from this piece, take this: any unsolicited phone call, text, or message asking you to move money is a scam until you have verified it by calling the institution back on a number you already trust. Everything else is detail.

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Common questions about reporting a UK scam

What replaced Action Fraud in the UK?

Report Fraud. From 4 December 2025, City of London Police's new service replaced Action Fraud as the national fraud and cybercrime reporting platform for England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The full public launch happened in January 2026. The new service operates at reportfraud.police.uk and on 0300 123 2040. Anyone going to the old Action Fraud URL is now redirected to the new service. The replacement followed years of public criticism of Action Fraud, including reports that 96% of cases received no police follow-up. Report Fraud includes a new contact centre, a new online reporting tool, and the Report Fraud National Crime Analysis Service (N-CAS) replacing Action Fraud's backend.

What is the PSR mandatory reimbursement rule, and does it apply to me?

The Payment Systems Regulator's mandatory reimbursement requirement for Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud came into force on 7 October 2024. It requires UK payment service providers to refund consumers, micro-enterprises, and charities who fall victim to APP fraud over Faster Payments and CHAPS — even when the consumer authorized the transfer under deception. The maximum reimbursement is capped at £85,000 per claim, refunds are due within five business days (35 if investigation is needed), and sending firms may charge an excess of up to £100 (no excess for vulnerable customers). This is the UK's structural fix for the same Regulation E gap that still leaves US Zelle and Cash App victims stranded.

Should I report to Report Fraud or to my local police?

Both, in most cases. Report Fraud handles the national intelligence picture and routes serious cases to local police forces. Your local police force handles immediate safety issues, ongoing crime in progress, or when you can identify the suspect or local circumstances. For online scams with no in-person threat, Report Fraud is the primary route. If you are in immediate danger, call 999. For non-emergencies in Scotland, call Police Scotland on 101 — Scotland does not use Report Fraud.

What should I do about a suspicious email or text?

For emails: forward to report@phishing.gov.uk, run by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). For texts: forward to 7726 (this spells SPAM on a keypad) — your mobile network operator routes these reports to NCSC and works to block the sender. Both services are free, both feed real investigations, and the NCSC's takedown service has removed millions of malicious URLs. If you also clicked a link or entered any information, treat it as a successful phishing attempt and report the broader scam to Report Fraud as well.

I lost money to a UK scam. Can I get it back under the new rules?

If the scam involved an Authorised Push Payment (Faster Payments or CHAPS) made on or after 7 October 2024, the PSR mandatory reimbursement rule applies and your payment service provider is required to refund you up to £85,000 — usually within five business days of your claim. Tell your bank explicitly that you are making an APP fraud claim under the PSR rule, give them the date, amount, and recipient sort code/account, and document the deception. If your bank refuses, escalate to the Financial Ombudsman Service. Card-based scams have separate Section 75 (£100+) or chargeback protections.

What if the scammer is overseas?

You still report to Report Fraud — they coordinate cross-border investigation through partner agencies. Reports involving European or international payment fraud are also shared with Europol and Interpol's relevant units. The PSR mandatory reimbursement rule applies to the UK payment service provider regardless of where the scammer is located, as long as the original payment came from a UK PSP via Faster Payments or CHAPS. Overseas card transactions can usually still be charged back through your card issuer.

Sources & further reading

Every figure in this piece is drawn from these authorities. Click any of them to verify.

Where to report a scam in the UK, after Action Fraud got replaced, and the banks were told to start paying.