FINGHTING AUTHORIZED PUSH PAYMENT SCAMS
Yesterday I got a phone call, identified as “Visa CAL.” A nice guy introduced himself as a Visa Fraud division rep., and asked me to confirm a payment to Mr. X. What gave this “Visa Rep.” away? Well… he spoke Russian, while I live and do my business in Israel. Once I switched to Hebrew, he simply hung up.
On another occasion, I got a phone call with an Ireland country code, and another nice guy said that a loan I was “asking” for was authorized. This one spoke English. Needless to say, once I switched to Hebrew, he… hung up.
I’m sure you’ve heard similar stories from your friends or read about them online. Fishing and fraud attempts go on for quite some time and, unfortunately, become more and more sophisticated.
But these are small fish, trying to steal from personal accounts or credit cards. Bigger fish swim (and in many cases succeed) in bigger ponds, scamming small and large businesses, companies, and corporations.
The phenomenon of Authorized Push Payment (APP) scams has been recognized as a real threat and a growing criminal tendency that costs companies around the globe millions of dollars, pounds, and euros.
APP scams imply that a person or business is tricked into transferring funds to a fraudster posing as a genuine payee.
In the UK alone over 95,000 incidents of APP scams were registered in the first half of 2022, with losses totalling well above £200 million.
A year ago, in November 2021, UK’s Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) consulted on measures to address and prevent APP scams. PSR proposed fight the APP scam attempts by improving intelligence sharing by publishing scam data. Currently (Dec. 2022), “In an effort to create more transparency and encourage banks and building societies to do more to tackle APP, the regulator will require firms to provide data that shows the proportion of victims who are left fully or partially out of pocket, as well as the rates of APP scams happening at both sending and receiving banks or building societies” (PSR outlines APP scam reporting process, Fintech Futures, Regtech). This will undoubtedly help. However, the process is manual and costly, requiring excessive number of man-hours and vulnerable to human error.
DETELIX has addressed the problem by developing a BANK ACCOUNT DETAILS VALIDATION MODULE – an automated process that prevents APP scam upon onboarding or making changes to payees’ bank account details. The system provides an ultimate protection against fraudulent manipulations with emails and cyber-attacks on corporate ERP. It also protects against internal fraud or human error. Bank Account validation module is a fully automated validation process that neutralizes the APP scam attempts and helps keeping your company assets safe. Learn more about Detelix BAVM (Bank Account Validation Module).
