Rising Fraud Risk Tipped From Move to Real-Time Payments

Australia is getting ready to roll out their national faster payments platform. As reported in the Sydney Morning Herald banks are getting ready to enhance their fraud mitigation tools in belief that faster fraud will accompany the faster transactions.

While promising greater convenience for customers and businesses, switching to real-time payments can also increase the rise of fraud. That is because when funds settle instantly, banks will no longer have a day or more to investigate and stop payments that appear suspicious.

Albert van Wyk, the head of fraud at information agency Experian, said he expected scammers to step up their attempts to get consumers’ private financial information – used to commit fraud – when Australia moved to a real-time payment system under the New Payments Platform (NPP).

The concern for fraud with faster payment is very real as experienced in the UK, where faster payments have been available for about 8 years:

He pointed to the Britain, where online banking fraud jumped 132 per cent after it introduced a faster payments system in 2008.

Given such experience overseas, he said: “I think the implementation of a real-time payment environment will definitely lead to increases in opportunity for fraudsters to gain access to money, in a much faster way than what they ever have.”

Overview by Sarah Grotta, Director, Debit Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group

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