National Australia Bank says customers abandoned A$48.5 million worth of payments in the past two months after getting scam warnings from the bank.
NAB pings customers with an alert if a payment appears out of character for them or raises scam concerns. The notices are designed to encourage recipients to stop and check before they send money.
In December, with Christmas shopping and Boxing Day sales leading to high numbers of purchases, customers scrapped $26 million worth of payments after receiving an alert. About $22.5 million in payments were abandoned in November, known for its Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales.
Chris Sheehan, group investigations, NAB, says: “Banks have no visibility to a criminal’s interactions with someone via a text message, a phone call, social media messages or a dodgy website until someone attempts to transfer money or make a payment.
“These alerts are designed to pick-up any unusual indicators from a customer and trigger them to stop and pause before they hit send on any money because once that transfer is made it’s really hard to get it back."
With scam attempts on the rise, NAB has made a series of moves to take on the crooks, removing links from texts, beefing up its investigations team and signing up for a fraud and scams intelligence-sharing network using behavioural- and device-based technology from security vendor BioCatch.