Banks to check account names to beat transfer fraud

Link: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2018/oct/18/banks-to-check-account-names-to-beat-transfer

Date: October 29th, 2018

Media: THE GUARDIAN

What happened?

In recent years, as a result of fraud in the UK payment industry, criminals have developed increasingly sophisticated tactics to steal money. Criminals have been hacking the email accounts of builders, lawyers or other merchants, to send large amounts of money to criminal accounts. Starting next year, the so-called "beneficiary confirmation" system will mean that clients can verify that they are paying the right person.

Whom and where it affects?

Due to this scam network, there are many banks and users that have been affected by these frauds. In short, banking customers in the United Kingdom.

What sort of public or private institutions are involved?

There are several institutions involved in this wave of fraud.

These institutions were not directly affected by these frauds, but they did participate in them.
For example Barclays, a financial services company, which operated on the same account as the scammer used to accept your money. Barclays says he does not inform the police of such crimes, because "the bank is not the victim."

Another case is HSBC Bank, which was recently splashed, Falciani hacked the accounts of thousands of customers and delivered the information to the French authorities.

Why is it important for Banking and Finance?

In order to detect the growing wave of fraud in bank transfers. Because they withdraw large amounts of money, and currently the measure for these types of transfers or withdrawals are not safe.

What do you think will be the consequences in the foreseeable future?

That the frauds will be reduced, but perhaps the process would be slower, since it is necessary to confirm a great variety of documentation corresponding to the person who is doing the transfer.

Key words: Bank security, Electronic accounts, Bank transfers, Fraudulent payments, Payment confirmation, Scams