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Fair Play Council
A payment can leave in seconds. Getting help must not take weeks.
RC/FP/2026/CL.5 · 27 June 2026
Dear members,
This month, I have been thinking about the moment after a business owner realises a payment has gone to the wrong place. The transfer may have taken seconds. The next steps can be confusing: who to call, what evidence to preserve, whether the payment can be recalled, and whether anyone will treat the loss as a business’s problem rather than a small business’s emergency.
Our work is about making those steps clearer and fairer. It is also about showing that these are not isolated mishaps. Members have brought us reports from many countries, and the pattern is large enough to deserve careful attention.
What moved this month
On 10 June, the Fair Play Council wrote to the UK Payment Systems Regulator on reimbursement for small businesses and international payments (RC/FP/2026/21). Our concern is straightforward: existing protections matter, but the boundary around who is protected and which payments are covered matters just as much. UK APP reimbursement protections, in force since 7 October 2024, cover eligible consumers, micro-enterprises and charities up to £85,000 per claim. International payments are excluded.1 A business should not have to discover the limits of a protection scheme only after fraud has taken its money.
We have also continued collecting evidence through the Fair Play Council’s agenda item FP-001, first opened with our call for evidence in February, and through submissions including RC/FP/2026/S.1 and RC/FP/2026/S.2. In April, our open letter asked businesses to call before paying when invoice details change (RC/FP/2026/20). That advice is practical, but it cannot carry the whole burden. Verification, quick recall and fair reimbursement also depend on the institutions that handle payments.
Today, 27 June, we join the wider observance of Micro-, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises Day. The UN estimates that MSMEs account for about 90% of businesses, 60–70% of employment and around half of GDP worldwide.2 Those figures are a reminder that protecting small businesses from fraud is not a niche concern. It is part of protecting livelihoods and economic activity.
The numbers behind the work
As of today, Reseated has 1,000 members in 49 countries. Members have filed 2,756 reports from 50 countries. The difference between those country counts matters: people are reporting from beyond the places where we currently have members seated.
Within Fair Play, 125 members come from 40 countries. They have filed 231 reports from 39 countries. The median amount at stake is approximately US$4,680. There were 96 Fair Play reports in the last 30 days alone. That is a substantial amount of pressure for a business with little spare cash or time.
The reports cover fraud. Members describe businesses of different sizes: 42% are sole operators, 37% have teams of 2–9, 14% have 10–49 people, and 7% have 50–249. This is not a problem limited to one kind of business or one stage of growth. The countries with the most reports so far are the United Kingdom (33), United States (29), Nigeria (13), Kenya (13), South Africa (12), Canada (11), Germany (9) and India (9).
One member’s experience
One member in Nigeria described receiving what appeared to be a routine email about an invoice. The message said the payment details had changed. The member checked the message against the existing email thread, found nothing that seemed out of place, and sent the payment. Only afterwards did the real supplier confirm that no change had been requested. The member contacted the payment provider and supplied the invoice, email chain and transfer details, but the money had already moved onward.
The member’s account is anonymous, as our rules require unless someone chooses to take a public seat. It is specific in the way that matters: a familiar workflow, a convincing change, a payment made in good faith, and an urgent attempt to recover it. We do not need to name a business or an alleged wrongdoer to understand the problem. Nor should an owner’s carefulness be treated as a substitute for payment systems that can help verify who is being paid and act quickly when something goes wrong.
What we are learning
First, speed is part of protection. If a payment can be sent almost instantly, a response that begins only after long delays may arrive too late. Second, clear reporting routes matter: small businesses need to know whom to contact and what information to provide, without being passed from one institution to another. Third, cross-border payments cannot be an afterthought. Fraud does not respect national borders, while the rules and remedies available to a business may stop at them.
There is useful evidence that reimbursement rules can change outcomes. The UK scheme sets a defined reimbursement framework for eligible claims, but its scope also shows why small-business and international cases need close attention. We will keep distinguishing what the evidence shows from what we still need to test. Reports are the beginning of the work, not a substitute for checking patterns, consulting publicly and putting any proposed standard to a ballot.
What comes next
In July, we will continue reviewing member evidence for FP-001 and identifying what can be supported across different payment systems and jurisdictions.
At the next monthly Open Table in July, we will bring these questions back to members. The exact sitting date will be announced separately.
We will continue to develop practical public guidance on changed invoice details and evidence preservation, while keeping the larger focus on verification, rapid recall and reimbursement.
Thank you to Amina in Lagos, Daniel in Nairobi, Grace in London, Priya in Mumbai and David in Toronto for making time to contribute to this month’s discussion and evidence work. Thank you, too, to every member who has submitted an account, checked a detail or helped another owner find the right questions to ask. The reports are not just numbers to us. They are the basis for doing this carefully and together.
With respect,Chukwudi UmehChair, Fair Play CouncilLagos, Nigeria