The Santander Quarterly Scamtracker charts trends in authorised push payment (APP) scam types reported each quarter and the types of customers impacted.
Launched today (2 April), the Scamtracker shows that a total of £18,404,965 was stolen from the bank’s customers in the first three months of 2025. While this marks a 13% decrease in the amount taken by scammers during Q4 2024, the bank has spotted some worrying trends emerging.
Impersonation scams, advance fee scams and romance/friendship scams were identified as the top rising scams during Q1 2025, collectively accounting for nearly £3.5m stolen from customers.
The increase comes despite research from Santander showing that more than half of consumers say they are aware of romance/friendship scams (63%) and impersonation scams (49%).
Worryingly, despite being the second-biggest increasing scam type, the research also showed that less than one in five people reported being aware of advance fee scams (17%).
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Despite decreasing by 17% quarter-on-quarter, the Scamtracker shows that purchase scams continue to account for more than half of all claims during Q1 2025, individually making up for another £3.5m stolen.
Cases involving gig tickets accounted for more than 10% of all purchase scam claims in Q1, as scammers preyed on the demand for Sabrina Carpenter and Coldplay tickets.
Chris Ainsley, head of fraud risk management at Santander UK, said: “While a decrease in the amount stolen by scammers is welcome, £18m is a staggering amount to have been taken from our customers and placed into the criminal underworld.
“Scams are evolving at breakneck speed, which can make staying on top of the new ones exceptionally hard for customers. Just this week, we’ve seen the emergence of fake sportswear ads on Facebook, leading to 450 customers being scammed out of their hard-earned money. Providing customers with the information they need to protect themselves from these criminals is vital if we don’t want to see that £18m increase in the next Scamtracker stats.”
Who is being targeted by scammers?
The Santander Quarterly Scamtracker Q1 2025 found that customers aged 80-plus reported the biggest increase in scams, up 7% on the previous quarter. This was driven by scammers impersonating banks.
Customers aged 18-34 saw an increase of 6%, driven by concert ticket purchase scams.
The value of claims as a result of scammers impersonating the police fell by 40% from more than £1.9m to just over £1.1m. But impersonation scams of other organisations – not a bank or the police – such as HMRC, saw the largest proportionate increase. These accounted for nearly 14% (£1.2m) of the total amount stolen, up from 13% in Q4 2024.
