Britain’s National Crime Agency on Monday launched its first joint initiative with the financial industry aimed at detecting and disrupting payments by U.K. offenders who pay facilitators overseas to livestream the sexual abuse of children. 

The NCA, in partnership with NatWest, issued an alert encouraging banks and payment-service providers to build processes for identifying payments potentially made for access livestreamed child sexual abuse. The agency said that identifying a related transaction trail is a primary point of intervention and the United Kingdom is among the worst nations in the world for facilitating such activity. 

“Behind every instance of livestreamed child sexual abuse is an exchange of money and a financial footprint,” NCA Director General (Threats) Steve Rodhouse said in a statement. “Every time this happens, there is an opportunity for offenses to be prevented and children to be protected.”

Such offenses typically involve U.K.-based offenders paying facilitators abroad, frequently in the Philippines, to abuse children on a live video feed, in many cases with the U.K. offender directing the abuse remotely.

Under the new framework, banks will be given guidance to detect patterns consistent with such payments, investigate transactions they believe could be funding livestreamed abuse, and assist law enforcement in monitoring Sexual Harm Prevention Orders, which can restrict the number of bank accounts an offender holds and impose bans on international money transfers or foreign travel, the NCA said. 

The agency added that it has been sharing real case examples and live investigations with private-sector members through its Public Private Partnerships unit to help banks understand patterns of behavior and transaction history.

The NCA cited a recent prosecution to illustrate the kind of low-value, high-frequency payments banks would be asked to flag. Jamie Beckett, 37, was sentenced earlier this month to 23 years after being convicted of sexual-abuse offenses involving seven children, the agency said. Beckett offered to send a facilitator in the Philippines cash for medical appointments, electricity, and Wi-Fi in exchange for images and videos of child abuse, the NCA said.

With that deal in place, Beckett sent relatively small amounts of money, all of the time. Individual payments ranged from as little as £6.20 to a maximum of £187 per request, and over a two-year period Beckett exchanged nearly 9,500 messages and 356 media files with the facilitator, according to the agency.

“We must not shy away from what this livestreaming of abuse means,” Rodhouse added. “It is a practice whereby, mainly, men in the U.K. pay to watch the rape and sexual abuse of children overseas. It is serious crime and it is right that the NCA works with partners across the financial industry to put an end to this horrendous criminality.”