Wirex Limited's H1 2026 Transparency Report: Over £650,000 of Financial Crime Stopped

Chet Shah, CEO of Wirex Limited, shares his thoughts on what the H1 2026 Transparency Report shows about fraud, money laundering, and where the industry needs to do better.

Today we published our second Transparency Report for H1 2026, covering 1st January to 30th June 2026. It follows the first one back in January, offering an unfiltered, data-rich look at how we protect customers and tackle financial crime, including the bits that aren't flattering. When I took this role I said I'd lead with transparency, because trust is earned with facts rather than slogans, and this is what that looks like.

It's been our busiest period yet, with more than 7 million transactions worth around £600 million, roughly 70,000 new customers, and 99.9% platform availability with no major outages. For many companies, growth is usually where controls slip, but protecting customers matters more as we grow, not less, and it's something we're most proud of this year.

The highlights:

• £442,149 stopped from being lost to scams, across 238 fraud-prevention interventions

• £225,000 in suspected criminal funds blocked from moving through the financial system

• 183 Suspicious Activity Reports filed with the National Crime Agency

• 52 law enforcement requests supported in live investigations

• 42% fewer customer complaints, and 67% fewer cases referred to the Financial Ombudsman Service, against H2 2025

• 246 fraud-prevention rules running at any one time

What Is the Wirex Limited Transparency Report?

Wirex Limited is a UK-headquartered payments provider and an FCA-regulated Electronic Money Institution. Our Transparency Report is a voluntary disclosure, published twice a year, setting out our own numbers on fraud, money laundering controls, law enforcement cooperation and customer complaints.

In a sector where trust is paramount, the industry norm is vague claims. Instead, we want to offer measurable accountability: clear evidence of what we've achieved and where we can go further.

How Much Fraud and Money Laundering Did Wirex Limited Prevent in H1 2026?

Wirex Limited prevented £442,149 from being lost to scams and blocked a further £225,000 in suspected criminal funds between January and June 2026. The fraud figure came from 238 separate interventions. Alongside the money laundering work, we filed 183 Suspicious Activity Reports with the National Crime Agency and supported 52 law enforcement requests in live investigations.

Investment scams were the most common type we saw, and they overwhelmingly started on social media, with an advert, post or DM promising returns no legitimate product could offer, which then moves into WhatsApp or Telegram where the customer is pressured. By the time a payment instruction reaches us, the persuading has already happened somewhere else. In fact, UK Finance reported that criminals stole £1.28 billion through payment fraud in 2025, with authorised push payment scams rising 19% to £576.4 million while unauthorised fraud fell 5%. Fraud is moving away from theft and towards deception.

Two details from our own data stuck with me: the oldest potential victim we identified was 82 and the youngest 20, and suspected fraudsters ranged from 18 to 86. That tells you how indiscriminately criminal networks now recruit money mules.

On the money laundering side, the National Crime Agency estimates that over £100 billion is laundered through or within the UK each year, often driven by drugs, fraud and trafficking. Our SARs were down 25% on H1 2025, and I want to be direct about that: not because we put in less effort, but because we invested time in analyst training and took direct feedback from the NCA, so our escalation got sharper.

How Is Wirex Limited Using AI to Detect Financial Crime?

AI now sits behind a lot of how Wirex Limited spots criminal activity, alongside the 246 fraud-prevention rules we had running simultaneously at any one time in H1 2026. That approach won us the International Compliance Association's AI Compliance Solution of the Year award, and an independent audit in 2026 confirmed our financial crime controls were effective.

Wirex Limited spotted mule-like behaviour in one customer segment during H1 2026. Digging further with AI-assisted analysis, we found the same pattern across customers in several other countries, so what looked regional was actually a cross-border typology. We pulled out the red flags common to all of it and built them into a permanent detection rule that works wherever a customer is. Matching accounts were restricted quickly, and the same method has since caught other patterns early.

What Changed for Wirex Limited Customers?

Wirex Limited reduced customer complaints by 42% in H1 2026 against H2 2025, and cases going to the Financial Ombudsman Service fell 67%. We've reshaped how customers reach us, with 24/7 in-app chat, AI-assisted triage and expanded self-service, completed an independent review of our complaints handling, and we're contributing to the FCA's Consumer Duty thematic review of the payments industry.

Not only this, but we went back over fees we'd charged historically and decided some applied in 2020 and 2021 may have been unfair. We refunded the customers affected, and whilst five years is a long time to go back, I still think it was the right thing to do.

What's Next, and What Needs to Change

We're excited to continue our work to build trust in our company and the wider industry, with a best-in-class team that saw Wirex Limited recognised as one of Sunday Times' 'Best Places to Work' 2026.

Wirex Limited has built two platforms in-house that go live over the coming months:

• Sentinel is a self-contained AML case review and reporting tool that looks at customer behaviour as a whole and suggests next steps for an analyst to confirm.

• Tradecraft trains our analysts against AI-generated scenarios based on the tactics criminals actually use against us, rather than the generic, and frankly boring, e-learning most of the industry still runs.

However, we recognise that the wider industry also needs to change. With investment scams originating on social media, we need Big Tech, social media, telecoms and messaging platforms to be held accountable for the harm they help cause. In the meantime, we'll keep getting better at intervening at the point money moves.

Read the full H1 2026 Transparency Report here.