Verinity, a financial technology company based in South End, has won an Innovate UK Women in Innovation Award for its new approach to preventing authorised push payment fraud.
Verinity’s founder, Melody Williams, is one of 61 Innovate UK Women in Innovation award-winners, and receives a £75,000 grant and a 12-month business support package.
Williams was recognised for an approach that shifts the focus away from the person being manipulated and onto the scammer.
“Most solutions try to stop victims from being victims,” Williams said.
Williams established Verinity after helping a friend’s uncle untangle the aftermath of a scam that cost him a five-figure sum. The shame far outweighed the money he’d lost. He carried it as if being manipulated by a professional criminal were his own failure.
In 2025, criminals stole £576million through authorised push payment fraud – APP – up 19% from the year before. This included romance, investment and impersonation scams, in which people are psychologically coerced into authorising payments to criminals.
Innovation winner: Melody Williams set-up Verinity to stop the scammers
“Almost every current defence built to stop these scams works by trying to convince the victim not to proceed, at the very moment the criminal is pressuring them the hardest,” Williams said.
“Socially engineered victims often don’t realise it. They trust the human being they are in contact with.”
Since October 2024, banks have been required to reimburse most APP fraud losses. Detection of suspicious transactions keeps improving, yet prevention still leans on warning the customer, the one person a scammer has already compromised.
Verinity’s technology is designed to disrupt the scammer’s attempt earlier in the process. The approach, developed with backing from Innovate UK, has been refined through ongoing conversations with fraud professionals from across the industry and public-sector counter-fraud teams, including the National Trading Standards scams team.
“Too often, the person being manipulated carries the responsibility, blame and emotional impact, and much of the financial cost now lands on the banks. Meanwhile, the criminals just update their script to counter every new warning,” Williams said.
“We are turning the tables on that.”
Louise Baxter the head of the National Trading Standards scams team, said: “Our team supports scam victims every day, and the pattern never changes: by the time someone is making the payment, the criminal has already done their work.
“Approaches that put the pressure back onto the perpetrator rather than the person being exploited are exactly what this fight needs.”
The Innovate UK Women in Innovation Awards began in 2016. Over the past decade, the awards have supported hundreds of women entrepreneurs to grow and scale innovative businesses, while inspiring more women and girls to see innovation and entrepreneurship as a viable career path.
Previous winners have gone on to secure an additional £358million in funding and investment. They have created high-value jobs, expanded into international markets, received prestigious industry honours and forged partnerships with major organisations.
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