I feel I have to stand up for the banks when it comes to the fraud concerns of Faster Payments. True, some banks have implemented temporary solutions to manage fraud resulting from Faster Payments, but it is essential that people don’t misunderstand ‘temporary’
to mean ‘inadequate’.
Banks have to review their fraud prevention tools and processes on an ongoing basis, and regularly make changes to keep up with changing technology and changing fraud trends, and the UK banks are very experienced and capable of doing this. The banks that
have gone live with Faster Payments were prepared for the changing nature of the fraud they would face, and made sure that they and their customers would be protected when it went live.
A good fraud prevention system is never permanent, it evolves and changes all the time. As the world around it changes, for example with chip and PIN, online banking, Faster Payments, SEPA or mobile banking, banks will expand their fraud strategies to encompass
new channels and trends. That is one of the reasons we are seeing such a move towards real-time and enterprise fraud systems as banks combine information from many different sources to ensure they are as accurate as possible when preventing fraud.
Ultimately, it is the banks that are liable for fraud, not the consumer – so it is in their benefit to make sure their systems are as secure as possible.