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The Mobile Ecosystem Forum (MEF) has been working with VodafoneThree to support the company in building a proof-of-concept to help banks tackle fraud and protect their customers.
The project has been developed by a partnership including MEF, VodafoneThree, the Cyber Defence Alliance and Barclays, and has now expanded to include The Co-operative Bank, now part of the Coventry Building Society, and TSB
Since August 2025, over 2million fraudulent messages have been blocked from reaching participating banks’ customers. This marks an additional increase of approximately 25% of banking scam messages being blocked on the VodafoneThree network. (Annual Fraud Report 2025, UK Finance, Fraud Strategy 2026, UK Government (March 2026) )
As UK banks lose £1.17 billion a year due to fraud, this newly developed process helps stop fraudulent SMS messages before they reach banking customers whilst ensuring legitimate messages still get through.
MEF, which acts as the independent global voice of the mobile ecosystem, has been a champion of anti-smishing for many years, and developed the original SMS Sender ID Protection Registry in 2018. The Registry spots and block smishing messages that pretend to be from a legitimate company but are in fact ‘spoofs’ attempting to defraud the customer.
How this partnership was born
As part of the Cyber Defence Alliance (CDA) collaboration, MEF, CDA, Vodafone and Barclays were discussing anti-fraud challenges and realised that they could work together on a new initiative, with each party bringing a unique perspective and set of knowledge and skills.
MEF’s role
MEF’s role was to help identify the fraudulent messages so that the Mobile Network Operator (MNO) could block these Scam campaigns.
MEF supports this work by applying its anti-smishing expertise to intelligence shared by participating banks and partners. This enables the initiative to identify and help disrupt fraudulent messaging activity while taking steps to protect legitimate customer communications, approved campaigns and everyday person-to-person messages.
In this way, MEF worked as the trusted intermediary; operating as aggregator, assimilator and disseminator of fraudulent data within the P2P SMS messaging channel.
Building on success
Due to the success of this original proof of concept and the previous success of MEF’s SMS Sender ID Protection Registry, MEF is now working with other major brands providing the same anti-fraud service blocking these
MEF’s SMS Sender ID Protection Registry Registry deals with 318million A2P SMS messages per month, which is roughly 25% of the overall A2P SMS sent in the UK. MEF’s Registry protects around 50 brands in the UK, including 8 of the 10 largest banks and many government departments. The service is offered in cooperation with the National Cyber Security Centre, UK Mobile (the association for mobile operators in the UK) and UK Finance (the association for banks in the UK).
Rachel Andrews, Director of Corporate Security and Fraud, Vodafone
Preventing fraud on our network and protecting trust in the UK’s digital economy is a huge priority. With fraud now accounting for 44% of all crime, no single organisation can tackle it alone. We’re working closely with banks, government, law enforcement, and industry partners like MEF, to stay ahead evolving our capabilities as quickly as fraudsters change their tactics. What’s clear is that we need to innovate as well, scaling new solutions like this is crucial in making the UK one of the toughest places in the world for fraudsters to operate.
Nick Gliddon, Business Director at VodafoneThree
Banks sit at the frontline of the UK’s fight against fraud, and their role has never been more critical. Together, we’re leading the way by stepping up our work with banks to strengthen protections and accelerate new solutions. And we’re challenging partners across the sector to match that ambition by working with us to raise the bar and better protect customers at scale.
Dario Betti, CEO of Mobile Ecosystem Forum
For many years, MEF has been at the forefront of the fight against smishing, continuously evolving our strategy to keep pace with the changing tactics used by fraudsters. MEF developed the first Sender ID Registry to block fraudulent messages, and we’re pleased to have used this expertise to support VodafoneThree in this successful initiative, which shows what can be achieved when industry partners work together in a practical and targeted way to tackle fraud. The results are significant, and we look forward to seeing this approach adopted more broadly across the industry.
Ray Sharma is an Industry Analyst and Editor at The Fast Mode. He has over 15 years of experience in mobile broadband technologies and solutions, conducting research and analysis on various technology segments and producing articles and write-ups on the latest developments within the sector. He is also in charge of social media engagement and industry liaisons.
Follow him on LinkedIn or Facebook. He can be reached at [email protected]
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