By Henry Calvert, Head of Networks, GSMA.
The UK, like all countries, faces an ongoing battle in the fight against online fraud. As criminals become more sophisticated, industries need to work together to create the relevant online cyber prevention tools needed to protect their customers.
Today, the four main UK mobile operators –Vodafone, Virgin Media O2, BT/EE and Three– have announced that they are collaborating on CAMARA APIs (Application Programmable Interfaces) to help businesses, cloud providers and app developers tackle online fraud and provide a more streamlined and frictionless age verification process.
Network APIs launched as part of the global GSMA Open Gateway initiative create a common framework using industry-wide CAMARA and TM Forum standards. These allow developers to simply plug into, provision and use the low-latency benefits, speed, and scale of 5G networks through a simple and secure user interface. Common APIs make it easier for third party companies to build apps and services that work seamlessly across all UK mobile networks, as well as overseas.
The operators already have the SIM Swap API available, which verifies that a SIM card has not recently been swapped or potentially under the control of a fraudster. The operators have also committed to collectively prioritise the launch of the following future CAMARA APIs by end 2025:
SIM Swap and Tenure APIs allow operators, financial institutions and governments to work together to prevent fraud on both a local and global scale. Age Verify API is an important consumer safeguarding tool, that provides a frictionless age verification experience for the user. The commitment of the operators to all individually launch the Tenure and Age Verify APIs by the end of 2025 provides developers with the certainty that their solutions will have the cross-operator scale they need.
More than 72 mobile operator groups, representing 284 networks and almost 80% of mobile connections across the world have now signed up to participate in the GSMA Open Gateway initiative, with a large focus being on ensuring a universal approach to tackling fraud through verification and authentication services. The GSMA has been supporting the UK operators on the initiative, which follows the successful launch of CAMARA APIs in similar initiatives across Europe, Asia Pacific and South America.
As the mobile industry comes together at MWC25 in Barcelona this coming week, looking for new innovative ways to tackle digital fraud will be high on the agenda. Fraudsters continue to find new ways to access our data and our bank accounts. So, it’s great that the GSMA Open Gateway initiative is playing a part in helping the UK mobile operators can work together and do everything they can to keep one step ahead.
