United KingdomFinance and insurance2025 – ongoingStarling Bank
Scam Intelligence AI fraud checker
Starling's Gemini-based scam checker lifted cancellations of risky marketplace payments by 300%, then grew to cover 10 more fraud types
Problem
In authorised push payment fraud, customers are talked into sending money themselves, so the bank's usual transaction checks often do not stop it. UK Finance put losses from this kind of fraud at £450 million in 2024.
Approach
In October 2025 Starling launched Scam Intelligence in its app: customers opt in and upload screenshots of marketplace ads or seller messages, Google's Gemini models read the images and text, and Starling's own systems return a risk assessment. Data stays in Starling's Google Cloud environment and is not used for training. In June 2026 the bank built the function into Starling Assistant as an agent that asks follow-up questions about romance, investment, pension and deepfake scams and suggests a call with its team, open to its five million customers.
Results
Takeaway
The tool helped customers decide before sending a payment, leaving post-payment monitoring to the bank. The bank published its own 300% figure without a baseline or period, so the effect's size cannot be checked.
Categories
- Industry
- Finance and insurance
- Business function
- Finance, risk and legalCustomer service
- Innovation type
- Product and service innovation
- AI technology
- Generative AIAI agents
- Adoption
- Built in-house
- Evidence
- Company's own claim
Sources
Source summaries
FStech reports the launch of Scam Intelligence, which analyses uploaded images of marketplace ads and seller messages for signs of purchase scams. It explains the checks, such as prices that look too good or bank details that do not match the seller, and says Gemini models feed Starling's own risk assessment. It cites UK Finance figures of £1.17 billion lost to fraud in 2024, £450 million of it through push payment scams.
Starling announces that its Scam Intelligence agent in Starling Assistant now handles romance scams and ten other scam types for its five million customers. It describes how the agent questions a customer about a request for money and suggests contacting the bank. It states that the original 2025 tool raised the rate of cancelled marketplace payments by 300%, without giving a baseline.
FStech reports the extension of Scam Intelligence into Starling Assistant to cover ten fraud types, including romance, investment and deepfake scams. It describes the question-and-advice flow and the input of a fraud victim advocate. It gives no performance figures and cites UK Finance data on rising push payment fraud losses in 2025.
Full details are in the original sources.
