New industry code for bank transfer scams: how can it help?

Hi I was scammed in 2017 and 2018 by the same person I put a report to fraud action kept all messages and bank accounts they never even looked at evidence then told me they are not pusue it any further I was scammed £5000 found action fraud a total waste of time

There is seemingly an obstacle to such data being disclosed that has to be overcome. This will no doubt be achieved because of the “Confirmation of payee” being used as a third piece of information when making a bank transfer.

If you are concerned about whether the details are correct, transfer £1 to the supposed car vendor then contact them to see if it has received.

There should be an automatic delay on bank transfers to allow for verification of the recipient’s bona fides.

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It won’t put an end to them. All compensation schemes mean the rest of us pay one way or another and scammers get away with it.

This new industry code compensating victims is fixing the end result and not tackling the root of the problem.

Banks and police need to work together to catch the criminals. How difficult can it be to hold a payment for a short time, and if a victim realises they have been scammed, contact their bank, flag the payment, send that flag onto the next bank, and the next bank, stopping the payment going abroad and contacting police where the end of the trail leads? Even payments going abroad will have accomplices in this country.

I would support having a delay, Alfa. From posts on this website, some of those who have been scammed realise the problem at the time but it is too late to take action.

I am in favour of a 24-hour holding period so the recipient can see that the money is coming but it is treated as uncleared funds for that period. However, I would like there to be a threshold of, say, £1,000 so that small payments can be transferred rapidly [or perhaps the option of an instant transfer could be made available on a no-liability basis by the transferring bank].

The comment is often made that online payments should be delayed for 24 hours, say, in case the payer finds they’ve made a mistake or been scammed.

When I make on online payment I am given a choice – make the payment immediately or at a future date. I have never used the “future date” but it gives me a calendar from which to choose the payment date, at daily intervals. So I can delay the payment by 24 hours. As far as I know, I then have until 10pm the day before to cancel the payment but cannot verify how well this works.

So, if you are not sure, and don’t choose the step of transferring £1 and checking it has gone to the right person, delay your payment date while you do the checks. Better still, of course, is to not make a payment until you are sure of what you want to do, before you instruct your bank to do it for you.

I use the future date choice for a number of payments, like credit or store card bills, although I have never cancelled one or wanted to alter the amount but that is a useful facility that you cannot get with a cheque payment.

One has to keep in mind that a future payment will become due as the on-line banking system does not treat it as an accrual and deduct it from the ‘available balance’.

I agree that the balance of advantage lies too much with the banks.

Ever since it became almost impossible to function without having a bank account they have collectively been immune from any loss of customers and so their practices have, by default, hardened against their customers who generally have not been made aware of the lack of protection for on-line payments. The banks are under various pressures to allow anyone to open an account and their background checks and status enquiries are clearly not keeping criminals out of the system. I think the speed with which new accounts can be opened shows that the process is probably in the hands of counter clerks or cashiers and not qualified managers, and that comprehensive references are not required as used to be the case; this is probably all because the banks want to seem to be acting quickly and expediting customers’ applications.

We have to come to terms with the fact that the potential rewards to the perpetrators are so great that serious criminal brains are heavily involved in the process and might even have ‘plants’ in the various banks who can open accounts fraudulently. They are also quite capable of operating an account along ‘normal’ lines for a period of months or even years before suddenly throwing it into overdrive and making a rapid number of in-and-out transactions and then emptying the account. If the timing is clever the banks involved will not be alert to the scam even if the computer system has run the warning flag up.

Ah, but only today I got an email from my bank telling me that the chegue clearing scheme is being revamped (perhaps overdue after 50 years) and you will only have 24 hours to cancel a cheque!
The TSB say 2 days, but then give an example of paying in a cheque on Monday and it can only be cancelled on Tuesday – so in fact only 1 day!