NatWest and Mastercard have published joint research warning that UK university students could collectively lose an estimated £20 million to fraud during the 2026 academic year. The figure is extrapolated from NatWest’s own customer scam data for 16 to 25-year-olds and scaled to reflect the bank’s market share across the broader UK population.
The research, conducted by Censuswide across 1,000 university students and 1,000 representative UK adults, found that 69% of students had encountered a scam, compared with 36% of those not in higher education. Of those students who had been targeted, 78% said it occurred within their first three months on campus, a period when many are managing money independently for the first time.
Fake job adverts and money-making schemes topped the list of threats, cited by 37% of respondents, followed by purchase scams at 36% and banking and crypto-related scams at 32%. Student finance impersonation and accommodation fraud each affected 21%. A separate NatWest survey of more than 5,000 undergraduates found that just 27% feel confident they could identify a financial scam if they encountered one.
The campaign
To coincide with the start of the academic year, NatWest, Mastercard and the Home Office have launched a joint public awareness campaign under the existing government “Stop! Think Fraud” framework. The campaign includes a series of printed posters, designed by UK artists Luke Insect, Gavin Connell and Samuel Tomson, distributed free of charge to universities and student unions. The posters are available digitally via Mastercard’s website and in physical form on request.
Fraud Minister Lord Hanson said: “Fraudsters continue to prey on freshers, using bogus job adverts, fake flats and scam investments to steal their money. We’re joining forces with NatWest and Mastercard to expose the scammers and protect students.”
NatWest also disclosed that it recently added a Fraud Triage Agent to Cora, its existing AI-powered digital assistant. The tool allows customers who suspect a fraudulent transaction to describe the incident in natural language and be routed to the appropriate fraud, scam or dispute team, rather than navigating category-based menus. The bank said the feature is designed to reduce friction at a moment of financial stress.
Market and regulatory context
The campaign lands inside a sharply evolving UK fraud-liability landscape. Revised reimbursement rules for authorised push payment fraud, overseen by the Payment Systems Regulator, shifted the default burden onto payment service providers from late 2024, increasing the commercial incentive for banks and card networks to invest in prevention rather than absorb restitution costs. NatWest’s AI triage tool and Mastercard’s broader Decision Intelligence risk-scoring suite both reflect that shift in where the financial risk sits.
Student-targeted fraud is not a new area for UK financial institutions, but the scale of the estimated loss figure and the breadth of the partnership, spanning a major retail bank, the dominant card network and a government ministry, signals an escalation in industry effort. The “Stop! Think Fraud” initiative, which originated with the Home Office’s National Fraud Strategy, provides a ready-made distribution channel for industry participants who want to align with regulatory expectations around consumer protection without duplicating campaign infrastructure.
The next indicators to watch are take-up rates among universities, whether the NatWest Fraud Triage Agent is extended to additional customer segments beyond credit card disputes, and whether Mastercard publishes efficacy data on its Consumer Fraud Risk product in the student demographic.
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