4 steps Gulf countries are taking to protect people from financial crime

More than 40,000 United Arab Emirates residents lost money to a scam in 2023, with an average loss of $2,194 suffered by a third of respondents to a survey carried out in 2024. And 60% of these victims sought reimbursement but received nothing. Financial crime isn’t just about losing money, however, it can also have serious legal repercussions

Financial crime is often regarded as victimless, only really impacting financial institutions and wider economies, but its true cost is deeply human. It can affect people, families and communities.

Economic growth across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region means organizations and people are increasingly at risk of being drawn into fraudulent schemes, sometimes without realising the consequences of their actions.

So what is being done across the GCC region to better protect people from the effects of financial crime?

Perhaps the most important first step is to raise people’s awareness of anti-fraud strategy from the outset. This means teaching people basic red flags so they can understand what scams look like, how to protect themselves and what constitutes illegal activity.

This information could be communicated widely through the typical channels people use to get their news or search for advice on other issues. Direct messages via email and banking apps could be used, as could social media and news campaigns.

Last year, for example, the Economic Security Centre of Dubai (ESCD) launched a financial crime awareness programme with the slogan "Strong Economy … An Aware Society". The aim is to give people, businesses and institutions information about detecting and preventing fraud, including phishing, fake adverts, crypto scams and deceptive schemes. The initiative shares practical guidance across social and traditional media.

There has been significant growth in digital payments across the GCC region recently.

In Saudi Arabia, for example, contactless payments were used in 98% of in-person transactions in 2024, up from just 4% in 2017. That same year, 79% of all retail transactions in Saudi Arabia were electronic (card or digital), an increase on previous years.

Meanwhile, Bahrain experienced a 196% surge in mobile wallet payments in 2021, driven by the pandemic but also by increased consumer confidence in using digital payments.

But with digital payments people are more likely to fall victim to fraud such as authorised push payment (APP) scams in which people are duped into making legitimate payments to illegitimate recipients. Combining step one – raising public awareness of financial crime – with transformative payments technology can help to reduce the impact of this type of fraud.

Indeed, innovations in payment technology can actually help to strengthen financial security. More advanced, integrated systems make it harder for criminals to exploit gaps, while real-time monitoring helps banks detect suspicious activity before it spreads.

Regulation is another powerful tool in the fight against financial crime and the human misery it can cause.

Bahrain is rethinking financial regulation through a fintech sandbox that aims to transform oversight into collaboration. It allows start-ups to test innovations like open banking APIs, artificial intelligence-driven identity verification and cross-border payment solutions.

Successful experiments are then scaled rapidly, while failures provide immediate lessons without the risk of severe penalties for users and providers. This is a proactive way to use regulation to enable innovation while protecting citizens and institutions.

Another important step in the fight against financial crime is the adoption of unified payment standards such as the ISO 20022 standard for payments messaging. Already being taken up in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain, this standard simplifies cross-border payments, enhances data quality and reduces transaction costs.

ISO 20022 could go beyond setting an industry standard to transform fraud prevention. Every digital payment is essentially just a message that tells one financial institution the amount of money to be moved, where and when. But because ISO 20022 allows far greater amounts of information to be carried than previous standards, it represents vital progress in the battle against fraud.

By educating consumers, transforming payments, using regulations to boost protection and adopting new payments standards, the GCC region is addressing the human impact of fraud.

The global Financial Action Task Force (FATF) maintains a “grey list” of countries with strategic deficiencies in anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing systems. It removed the UAE from this list in February 2024 and the European Commission followed suit in 2025 by taking the UAE off its list of high-risk countries for financial crimes such as money laundering.

This means banks and financial professionals no longer need to apply more checks on transactions from the UAE – a strong vote of confidence in the country’s compliance standards.

These developments highlight how the GCC is rapidly transforming its financial landscape, using technology and strong governance to participate in the global fight against financial crime and to address the toll it takes on individuals.

As financial fraud evolves, so must collective efforts to combat them. By understanding the human dimension of financial crime, governments and financial institutions can develop more effective strategies to detect, prevent and respond to it.

These efforts will help to safeguard financial firms’ operations, as well as the communities they serve – ensuring a safer financial environment for everyone in the GCC and further afield.