Yahoo Finance Westpac’s ‘first-of-its-kind’ crackdown on scammers
Westpac has announced a new scam-prevention initiative, which it hopes will save customers millions of dollars.
Westpac customers may soon notice a new detail in their online banking transactions, as the major bank brings in a new feature to crack down on scammers.
Westpac has announced a new security feature, known as Westpac SaferPay, which will flag payments with a high scam risk and present customers with a series of questions.
If the customer's answers indicate the payment is “highly likely” to be a scam, Westpac said it wouldn’t let the payment be processed. The feature will initially be available in the mobile app and will be extended to online banking in the coming months.
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Customers will initially be asked, "What's the payment for?". Customers' responses will then determine the next set of questions.
For example, if they select the payment is 'an investment', they will be asked, "How did you first come across this investment opportunity?".
If they select the payment is "for a friend or romantic partner", they could be asked, "Have you met this person in real life before?".
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Westpac CEO Peter King said the move aimed to save customers millions of dollars in scam losses.
“While our prevention measures have led to a considerable drop in customer losses over the last year, fraudsters are still taking millions of dollars from our customers each month – particularly through fake investment offers, impersonation calls and texts, and intercepted emails,” King said.
Westpac SaferPay plugs into the bank’s existing fraud systems and uses AI to help identify payments that have a high risk. The questions presented to customers will vary for each individual, based on the information they provide.
“This innovation is the first of its kind in Australia and will add important friction to payments deemed to have high scam risk,” King said.
NAB introduced similar real-time payment prompts in March last year. It said customers had abandoned an average of $240,000 in payments a day linked to potential scams.
Commonwealth Bank has joined up with Telstra to detect high-risk scam phone calls in real time, with CBA able to contact the customer or put in additional checks. It also has a SMS scam-related intelligence sharing pilot with Vodafone.
Late last year, the Australian banking industry launched the Scam Safe Accord, which is designed to give customers the same protections no matter who they bank with.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s Scamwatch received more than 300,000 scam reports in 2023, with losses totalling $476.8 million.
Westpac says customers have avoided losing more than $400 million to scammers over the past two years due to features like cryptocurrency blocks, payment name verification alerts and call spoofing measures.
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