April 2026 Chair’s Letter: Turning Reports into a Clearer Record

RC/FP/2026/CL.3 | 27 April 2026

Dear members,

April has been a month of building the structures that let evidence travel farther than any one report. The first Board of the Founders Assembly was elected on 23 April. The Platform Council’s pattern-review note, RC/PL/2026/N.1, and the Assembly’s Q1 report also mark a shift from launch activity toward a more regular record of what members are reporting and how the councils are testing it.

That institutional work can feel distant from the moment a payment goes wrong. It is not distant from our task. A council can only ask for a practical change if it can show that a problem recurs, affects different kinds of businesses, and is supported by evidence beyond a single account. Our job is to make that record careful enough to be taken seriously, while keeping the people who contribute it safe.

The numbers as of 27 April

The Assembly has 525 seated members in 49 countries. Members have filed 1,310 reports from 50 countries. The difference between those country counts is a reminder that people report problems across borders as well as from where they are based.

The reports are distributed across the councils as follows: Platform, 799; Cashflow, 320; Fair Play, 71; Red Tape, 54; Trade, 38; Team, 17; and Resilience, 11. These are reports, not a ranking of which problems matter most. They are an early picture of where members have chosen to contribute evidence.

Within Fair Play, 64 members from 28 countries have filed 71 reports from 27 countries. The median amount at stake is approximately US$4,875. That is the median reported amount at stake, not a total loss figure. All 71 reports describe fraud situations. Forty-one reports were filed in the last 30 days.

The largest country counts in the Fair Play submissions are the United Kingdom, 11; the United States, 6; South Africa, 5; Nigeria, 5; Mexico, 4; Brazil, 4; Kenya, 3; and Germany, 3. The reports also show the scale of the businesses affected: 49% of reporting members work alone, 35% are in teams of two to nine, 7% in teams of 10 to 49, and 8% in teams of 50 to 249. Percentages are rounded.

One account, and what it shows

One member described receiving an invoice that appeared to come from a supplier they already knew. A message arrived with revised bank details, and the member made the payment in the ordinary course of running a small business. The change was not discovered until the supplier asked why its invoice remained unpaid. By then, the member was trying to establish whether the transfer could be recalled and which financial institution could act. The missing money had been set aside for immediate business costs.

I am leaving out the member’s name, location, trade and amount. Those details are not needed to understand the issue, and protecting contributors is part of doing this work responsibly. The important sequence is specific: a familiar payment relationship, changed instructions, an authorised transfer, and an urgent search for a route to recover the funds. A business owner may have pressed the button, but that does not mean the fraud was freely chosen or that the consequences are small.

This account is one reason our 8 April open letter, RC/FP/2026/20, asked businesses to call before paying an invoice with changed details. That is a useful precaution, not a complete answer. Prevention advice cannot substitute for fast, understandable recall processes and a fair way to handle losses when prevention fails.

What we are learning

First, the report count tells us that this is not an isolated concern within the Fair Play evidence pool. It does not, by itself, prove how common fraud is across all small businesses. Our five-part pattern test exists to keep those claims disciplined: Volume, Frequency, Consistency, Spread and Corroboration. We must be clear about what the reports establish and what they do not.

Second, the range of countries and team sizes matters. A sole operator and a business with dozens of employees may face the same manipulated payment instruction, but they may have very different capacity to absorb a delayed recovery. Cross-border cases add further steps and uncertainty. The evidence needs to preserve those differences rather than flatten them into one average experience.

Third, a report is more useful when it records the sequence, not only the loss. What appeared changed? When was the payment made? When was the fraud noticed? What steps were taken to contact the provider and request recall? Which information was available, and where did the process become unclear? Members should share only what they are comfortable sharing, and should avoid including unnecessary personal or financial identifiers.

The broader stakes are significant: the United Nations estimates that micro, small and medium-sized enterprises make up about 90% of businesses worldwide and account for roughly half of global GDP.¹ That does not make every reported case representative. It does make it important that the systems businesses rely on are tested against the realities of small teams and limited cash reserves.

What comes next

For Fair Play, the next work is to continue gathering comparable evidence for agenda item FP-001 and check the five parts of the pattern test against the reports, not assumptions. We will keep asking members to describe the payment journey, the timing of attempted recall, whether the case crossed a border, and what response they received. We will also keep distinguishing a member’s account from a finding established across the evidence.

The Assembly’s process remains reports, pattern test, draft fix, public consultation, ballot, and letters to the people with authority to adopt a change. Fair Play is gathering evidence for FP-001, and dates for its next procedural steps will be announced as they are set. Open Tables are monthly, and dates for upcoming sittings will be announced separately.

Thank you to Ada in Abuja, Lerato in Johannesburg, and Miguel in Mexico City for contributing time and care to the Fair Play conversation. Thank you as well to every member who has filed a report, checked a detail, or helped another member put an experience into words. The work is not only in the numbers; it is in the patience required to make those numbers mean something.

Notes and sources

1. United Nations, Micro-, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises Day. ↩

Sources

1. United Nations: Micro-, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises Day