SINGAPORE, March 10 — The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) is ramping up its efforts to combat online scams by requiring advertisers and selected e-commerce sellers to verify their identities against government-issued records.
Under the E-Commerce Code of the Online Criminal Harms Act (OCHA), digital platforms such as Carousell and Meta’s Facebook Marketplace and Advertisements have been piloting identity verification measures for six months.
Following the trial period, the government has decided to extend Carousell’s assessment period until June 2025, while allowing Facebook Marketplace to continue verifying only selected sellers rather than all users.
“The industry must eliminate money worship, extravagance, and excessive speculation,” the MHA said in a statement that stressed the importance of verification in reducing fraudulent activities.
Although Facebook Marketplace saw a 55 per cent drop in e-commerce scams, scams from Facebook Advertisements increased by 12 per cent, prompting Meta to pledge that all advertisers will undergo identity verification by end-June 2025.
Authorities are also working with Meta to introduce verification requirements for Facebook Pages, where a significant number of scams have been reported.
The ministry said it has taken an outcome-based approach, meaning that if scam numbers do not decline significantly, stronger measures — such as mandatory verification for all sellers and advertisers — may be implemented.
For now, payment protection mechanisms, which would require verifying deliveries before releasing payments, remain optional as platforms focus on rolling out enhanced verification requirements.
In 2023, scam victims in Singapore lost S$651.8 million, a figure which rose to a record S$1.1 billion last year.
