Canada’s big banks and the three largest telecoms will be able to share information through a single platform to protect Canadians against fraud.

The Cross-Sector Anti-Fraud Exchange (CSAFE), launched this week, aims to help identify and prevent repeat fraud through the shared platform. Its goal, according to a press release, is to disrupt fraudsters, identify repeat fraud at critical decision points across account opening, authentication and transaction, reduce fraud risks with aggregated insights drawn from a broader set of confirmed events across participating institutions, and facilitate timely sharing of confirmed fraud intelligence so participants can respond.

CSAFE was developed by EnStream, a joint venture of Bell, Rogers and Telus which provides identity verification and authentication services for applications. The platform was fully launched following a pilot by Rogers and CIBC and includes among its founding participants Bell, Telus, BMO, Desjardins, National Bank, and Scotiabank.

“Participants bring the confirmed fraud intelligence; our role is to give them a secure, common platform to act on it together and to keep strengthening the capabilities over time with AI and machine learning as CSAFE grows, so the collective gets smarter and more effective over time,” Upinder Saini, president and CEO of EnStream, said in the release.

Enstream says the timing of this launch is critical as fraud in Canada “continues to grow in scale and sophistication as criminals adopt new techniques to automate and refine their schemes, including artificial intelligence and machine learning.”

“Fraud is a rapidly evolving, cross-sector problem, and our response has to reflect that to be successful,” added Anthony Ostler, president and CEO of the Canadian Bankers Association. “When financial institutions, telecom providers, government and law enforcement act on the same confirmed intelligence instead of working in isolation, we close the gaps criminals rely on to move undetected between sectors. That kind of collaboration is critical to protect Canadians; it’s the only way Canadian institutions can outpace fraudsters today.”