The Home Office has confirmed that pub trading hours will be extended to three more early evening fixtures during this summer’s men’s FIFA World Cup from June 11 to July 19 across the United States, Canada and Mexico.

A total of 13 matches involving England or Scotland could potentially be included in the national pub licensing hours extension.

READ MORE: Oxford’s Cowley Road Carnival could return this year

Licensed premises in England and Scotland were previously granted permission to extend their hours to 1am or 2am for fixtures kicking off between 8pm and 10pm for any home nation knockout.

Now, pubs will be allowed to stay open an extra two hours until 1am for round of 32, the first knockout stage, and round of 16 games, the second knockout stage, kicking off between 5pm and 9pm.

Last orders will be pushed back to 2am for matches starting between 9pm and 10pm.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has the power to extend licensing hours for events of “exceptional international, national or local significance”.

She said: “If our boys are on the pitch we want our fans to stay in the pub. So we’re giving pubs and bars an open goal to serve punters long after the last penalty hits the back of the net.

“We won’t have fans coming home before football does.”

Similar extensions were previously used for the Women’s Euro 2025 tournament and Men’s Euro 2024 final.

Webtrends Optimize has appointed Samantha Bessant as Customer Success Director as the British conversion rate optimisation company expands its client operations.

Based at the company’s Surrey headquarters, Bessant will lead a team of five across account management, support and onboarding. She also joins the senior management team alongside Chief Executive Officer Matt Smith, IT Director Matt Goodchild, Marketing Director Ben Charlesworth and Product Director Sandeep Shah.

The appointment gives Webtrends Optimize a dedicated executive focused on client relationships and the internal processes behind customer delivery. The role is intended to strengthen client partnerships, increase the value customers get from its software products and create more scalable ways of working.

Founded in 2000, Webtrends Optimize sells software that helps businesses test and refine websites and digital journeys. Its tools include A/B testing, personalisation, social proof, product recommendations and onsite surveys, all aimed at improving user experience and increasing online conversion rates.

The business works with clients including Odeon, Halfords, Virgin Wines, AJ Bell, Community Fibre, Trussell and National Rail. It operates globally and describes itself as a British B Corp business.

Growth record

The hire follows what Webtrends Optimize described as its strongest year yet in 2025. Milestones included B Corp certification, a 41% increase in new accounts, 44 product updates and the launch of a new user interface.

The company also said it retained a 4.8 out of 5 score for A/B testing tools on G2, a software marketplace and review platform. Alongside its product and sales performance, it highlighted its status as an accredited Living Wage Employer, its membership of the SME Climate Hub and a commitment to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2030.

Webtrends Optimize said it donates 2% of annual revenue to charitable causes and community initiatives. That broader social and environmental profile has become a more visible part of how software companies present themselves to customers, employees and investors.

Experience

Bessant joins after roles at Adimo, Poq and Artesian Solutions. Management pointed to that experience as a factor in the appointment as the business works to formalise customer success across onboarding, support and account management.

In software companies, customer success teams have become more central as subscription revenues depend on renewals, expansion and day-to-day product adoption. For suppliers serving retailers, travel groups, charities and other consumer-facing organisations, the quality of support and the speed at which clients can use testing tools often determine whether contracts grow over time.

Executive view

Chief Executive Officer Matt Smith linked the appointment to the company’s recent growth and next stage of development.

“Samantha’s appointment marks another exciting moment in Webtrends Optimize’s history. Samantha’s previous experience working at Adimo, Poq and Artesian Solutions means she brings a wealth of talent and ideas, which we know will grow our business further and build on our recent achievements,” said Smith.

Bessant said the company’s customer base and management plans influenced her decision to join.

“Joining Webtrends Optimize was an obvious choice for me. Their client base speaks volumes about the strength of the product and there was an incredibly clear synergy between my experience and the ambitions of the senior management team for customer success,” said Bessant.

Scams, or authorized push payments, are the scourge of the day.

While no formal figures exist, it is estimated that the global scam losses exceed $1 trillion per annum. Organized crime is at the heart of this increase, with some estimates putting 1.5 million employed as professional scamsters.

The rising professionalism of the scamsters, the availability of “off the shelf” scam tools (e.g., phish kits), the very high “gross margin”, the increasing digitization of customer experiences, and inadequate law enforcement are all contributing to a continued increase in scams across the world.

The regulatory expectations, and the associated cost of compliance, vary by market. The most extreme position exists in the UK, where financial institutions are liable for up to £85k in almost all cases. Most regulators are examining the “Shared Responsibility Framework” framework, and it is reasonable to assume that financial institutions will have to bear an increasing share of this cost.

Customer expectations prize fraud defences when selecting a financial institution. In a global survey of 18,000 customers, some 60% ranked “Good Fraud Protection” as either their top or the second priority. This was followed by “Ease of Use” (43%). While seemingly at odds, these two are the opposite sides of the same coin. Effective scam detection, measured by a high value detection rate at an acceptable level of false positives, becomes a key business growth imperative.

7 Steps to Scam Prevention

There is no one silver bullet defence against scams. The ideal scenario – a fully alert customer – remains unrealistic.

Instead, effective defence requires a multi-layered strategy. The following 7-step framework offers a practical, intelligence-driven approach toward scam defence.

1. Understand Customer Susceptibility

The framework begins with proactive assessment of customer vulnerability through sophisticated susceptibility scoring. This involves harvesting both monetary transactions and non-monetary events across all customer touchpoints to create always-on customer profiles. This requires an applied intelligence platform that enables real-time assessment that evolves with each customer interaction. (Note: This approach needs to be vetted against local privacy and permissibility requirements.)

2. Create Robust Customer Personas

By developing personas that reflect psychographic and behavioural characteristics, institutions can assess specific scam vulnerabilities. For example, customers with high investible income who engage in cryptocurrency trading may be particularly susceptible to investment scams. Knowing customers helps to protect them.

3. Deploy Targeted, Personalized, Proactive Communication and Education

Generic scam warnings prove largely ineffective. The framework emphasizes hyper-personalized, contextual messaging aligned to individual risk profiles and scam types, creating more informed and alert customers. Breaking the scammer’s spell is critical.

4. Alert and Amplify with the Susceptibility Score

At the heart of scam detection lies sophisticated monitoring of customer behaviour and activity. The framework recommends multi-layered decisioning that first identifies anomalies, then determines whether they’re associated with scams or traditional fraud. Enterprise fraud capabilities can “amplify” transaction scores based on customer susceptibility and personas.

5. Build Dynamic In-Journey Engagement

Understanding that customers in “hot states” often ignore generic warnings, the framework emphasizes dynamic, personalized dialogue that creates appropriate friction and reflection opportunities. This may include cooling-off periods or post-transaction follow-up when customers are more receptive.

6. Close the Back Door

Since stolen funds must flow through mule accounts, the framework emphasizes real-time intervention capabilities beyond traditional anti-money laundering controls. This requires transitioning from monthly batch assessments to instantaneous monitoring and account freezing.

7. Collaborate across the Ecosystem

Build a formal ecosystem across the regulator, law enforcement, telcos, social media platforms, and industry bodies to facilitate data sharing and best practice. This is probably the hardest task.

How to Operationalize the Enterprise Fraud Framework

Scam prevention demands more than traditional fraud controls – it requires a sophisticated, data-driven platform capable of analyzing vast volumes of signals in real time, while maintaining the right balance between customer protection and experience. To operationalise this framework, banks can integrate advanced analytics, orchestration, and engagement capabilities across the customer lifecycle.

The Path Forward

The scam epidemic represents an existential threat to customer trust and institutional stability. Financial institutions that wait for regulatory mandates or perfect solutions will find themselves at a significant disadvantage.

Success requires ruthless measurement and tagging of both structured and unstructured data to create virtuous feedback loops. Equally critical is constant engagement with operations teams and active monitoring to assess new vectors and anticipate emerging attack patterns.

As the threat landscape continues evolving, financial institutions must embrace proactive, intelligence-driven strategies that protect customers while maintaining operational efficiency. Use the seven-step framework as a roadmap to transform scam prevention from compliance obligation into strategic advantage and position for success in an increasingly complex risk environment.