Major banks, telecommunications and tech companies in Canada are banding together for the first time to fight ever-more creative scams that target people and their money.

The initiative aims to thwart and shut down the types of scammers almost anyone with a phone or computer has come across—those who, say, spoof phone numbers to trick victims into handing over their banking information, in some cases posing as the government or the bank, itself; or those who pose on social media as relatives or neighbours to encourage people to e-transfer them cash. 

While telecoms have played an endless game of whack-a-mole trying to shut down fraud lines, and banks have kept tabs on millions of accounts for suspicious transactions, they haven’t joined forces, said Anthony Ostler, president of the Canadian Bankers Association.

“The bad actors have taken advantage of the fact that there’s gaps in the system,” Ostler told The Logic.

That is set to change with the new pact between industry, government, banks, tech companies and law enforcement agencies, he said. 

The Canadian Anti-Scam Coalition (CASC) came together informally about a year ago, and is set to launch Tuesday afternoon. The group includes Canada’s major credit card companies, in addition to its banks. All the major telecoms, including Rogers, Bell and Telus, have signed on, as have Google, Meta and Kijiji. Each has committed to share funding and expertise toward CASC, though Ostler did not say how much money is involved. The RCMP and Quebec’s provincial police service are also on board.

“We have some of the best experts in the country contributing to what we’re doing,” said Ostler, who will serve as the coalition’s chair. “If you added up all those person-hours, it is very substantive.”

The alliance is modelled on Australia’s National Anti-Scam Centre, which launched in 2023. There, tech companies, banks, telecoms and digital platforms work together as a group with law enforcement and governments to try to make the country a tougher target for fraudsters. 

The Australian agency is working on a secure way to share data in real time about scams between companies, and with law enforcement, rather than passing on information manually on an ad hoc basis as organizations did in the past. 

Unlike Australia’s efforts, which were mandated by the government, Canada’s group has come together voluntarily, Ostler said.

In the fall, they plan to develop a shared definition of a scam, so they can figure out what information they need to track and how they can share it. Working through the data requirements and privacy concerns are key first steps toward sharing more information between siloed industries, he said.

In the meantime, they’ve launched a joint public awareness campaign to encourage people to verify information when confronted by requests for money or personal data. “Often the scammers play on ways to pull on people’s emotions. So they’ll play on greed, fear or lust,” Ostler said. The campaign, which will be shared with the members’ clients and users, is designed to give consumers enough pause to avoid rash mistakes. 

Last year, Canadians lost $647 million to reported cases of fraud, according to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (CAFC), which tracks scams across the country. In a measure of how absurd the situation has become, the organization had to start warning about fraudsters impersonating CAFC employees who claim to be investigating scams and promise to help victims get their money back in exchange for personal and financial information.

Ostler hopes to see those numbers go down, noting that Australia saw a 39 per cent decrease in money lost to fraud in the first half of 2025 compared to the same period in 2023. However, fraud-related losses in that country seem to be trending upward again.

Exploiting technology is a hallmark of modern scams, and the advance of artificial intelligence and deepfake technology is making it easier to fool people. “Consumers just need to understand there could be new ways of things coming at them,” Ostler said. “The ammunition will get bigger, the guns will get stronger.”