Bank transfer fraud is costing victims £28,000 every hour as banks have only reimbursed less than half of the money lost to scams.
Between July 2019 and the end of June 2021 a total of £854m was lost across over 300,000 customers who fell victim to authorised push payment fraud.
Most banks have signed up to voluntarily reimburse all customers who are not at fault but given that this works on a voluntary basis, only 42% of losses was returned, Which?’s analysis of UK Finance figures show.
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As a result, £495m has not been reimbursed, leaving scam victims to shoulder net losses at a rate of £4.7m a week — equivalent to £676,881 a day or £28,203 an hour.
This means that victims are losing more money to bank transfer scams every hour than the average UK worker earns in a year, which currently stands at £25,971.
In one example, Which? said a Santander (BNC.L) customer in his 80s was left more than £3,600 out of pocket after falling for an impersonation scam on WhatsApp. The scammer pretended to be his son before tricking the senior citizen into transferring money to an account to supposedly help him pay for a bill.
The HSBC (HSBA.L) account he was asked to transfer the money to was not in his son’s name, but he thought it might be a friend who he owed money to, so he went ahead. When he…