Online payment fraud is spiralling. Lee Grant investigates why it’s the crime that nobody pays for, except us
In 2022, the UK’s total financial loss to fraud exceeded £1.2 billion, with more than 2.9 million reported cases. Maybe you’re among the statistics. Anyone who’s responded to a phone call, SMS or social-media post and was then tricked into transferring money to criminals is a victim of Authorised Push Payment fraud, currently the most prolific form of financial crime affecting UK consumers and businesses.
We’re going behind the scenes, speaking to financial regulators, industry groups and crime experts to learn why this type of fraud has become so prevalent and what happens once the crime is reported.
You’ll hear from the police about the challenges of investigating the crime and learn the uncomfortable truth about who is picking up the compensation bill. We’ll also look to the future, hearing from banks and the communications industry about innovations designed to prevent more of us from becoming victims.
Pushy payments
UK Finance is the trade body representing banks and hundreds of other businesses within the finance sector. Its latest figures reveal that 40% of all UK fraud committed in 2022 was via a mechanism known as Authorised Push Payment (APP). A spokesperson for UK Finance told PC Pro how APP fraud differs from unauthorised fraud. “Unauthorised is where the customer hasn’t authorised payment, so if your bank card was taken out of your pocket and the contactless function was used, that’s considered unauthorised. Authorised is where [the victim] has authorised the payment and it usually involves being tricked.”
If you’ve ever received a suspicious phone call from someone pretending to be your broadband provider, Microsoft or one of dozens of other organisations, then you’ve experienced a type of APP fraud. UK Finance estimates that more than £485 million was lost to APP in 2022, and to understand how this crime has become so prolific, we must begin by talking about the Faster Payments System (FPS).
In 2008, Pay.UK, in conjunction with the Payment Services Regulator, introduced FPS, giving anyone with a UK bank account the ability to transfer money or pay bills almost instantaneously. “Last year, FPS processed 3.4 billion transactions, with a value of £2.6 trillion,” Pay.UK told PC Pro. “These transactions underpin the UK economy and we don’t want to lose those benefits.”
Despite the unquestionable advantages of FPS, it launched with some major flaws, as the Payment Systems Regulator explained: “Because of their real-time nature, once
