A Canadian telecom joint venture is rolling out a new tool to help businesses spot when a phone number has been reassigned—a big deal because recycled numbers are quietly becoming a major source of fraud.
EnStream, a company owned by Bell, Rogers and Telus (founded in 2005), has teamed up with Proximus Global to launch an API that tells companies when a phone number used by one of their customers has been given to someone new. You may recall EnStream was a mobile wallet venture that never really took off.
Why does this matter? Because phone numbers don’t stay with one person forever. When numbers get recycled, businesses often don’t know. That leads to problems like one-time passcodes going to the wrong person, accounts being taken over, or private info landing in someone else’s inbox.
Nearly one in five Canadians lost money to fraud last year, according to TransUnion, and recycled numbers are becoming a sneaky part of the problem.
With this new API, companies can check in real time whether a phone number has changed hands and when. That lets them trigger extra verification, block suspicious logins, and avoid sending sensitive information to the wrong person.
“Fraud doesn’t just hurt victims financially—it undermines the trust that people place in digital services every day. Even a single victim is one too many. At EnStream, our mission is to protect Canadians by making fraud prevention seamless and reliable. This partnership with Proximus Global allows us to provide businesses with real-time intelligence to keep accounts secure, while ensuring customers enjoy safer, more frictionless digital experiences,” said EnStream CEO Upinder Saini in a statement to iPhone in Canada.
Proximus Global will help deliver the tool to businesses, making it easier for banks, fintech apps, government services, and other organizations to plug this data into their systems.
The companies say the goal is simple: make digital accounts safer, cut down on identity-theft headaches, and help Canadians avoid becoming the next victim of a number mix-up. It would also be good if companies would further leverage passkeys and biometrics to confirm identities and also make app-based two-factor codes the norm.
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