Meta will require financial advertisers targeting Australians to verify their identities from February.
Advertisers on Meta’s platforms must provide an Australian financial services licence number or government-issued identification to run advertisements related to financial services.
"The introduction of financial advertiser verification is an important additional step towards protecting people in Australia from these sophisticated scammers, who try to impersonate legitimate financial institutions and advertisers,” said Will Easton, Meta’s Australia and New Zealand Managing Director.
Verification will be required for advertisers in any country seeking to reach Australian users.
Information on advertisements’ beneficiaries and payers will be displayed alongside the ads, much like Meta’s rules on political advertisements.
Meta said last month that it had removed around 8,000 misleading ads from Facebook and Instagram, after these ads used images of celebrities to encourage Australians to donate money to fraudulent investment schemes.
Former Fortescue Metals CEO Andrew Forrest sued Meta in California in 2022 over similar ads for fraudulent investment schemes featuring his likeness in a case that is ongoing.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission found in August that Meta had hosted these advertisements since at least September 2017, with 58% of them related to cryptocurrency and including images of public figures like Nicole Kidman, Daniel Ricciardo and Russell Crowe.
Meta’s (NASDAQ: META) share price closed at US$574.32 on Friday, up from the previous trading day’s $569.20. Its market capitalisation is US$1.44 trillion.