Share a story, stop a scam: Australian Payments Plus

This National Scams Week, Australian Payments Plus (AP+) is highlighting the theme of Share a story, stop a scam.

Australians reporting and sharing their experiences of scams may stop others from falling for one.

AP+ has developed a sophisticated suite of products that make life much more difficult for scammers who are looking for an opening to defraud people or steal their identity.

AP+ Chief Executive Officer, Lynn Kraus (pictured) said the completion of the design phase of the new Confirmation of Payee service was an important milestone.

When rolled out, Confirmation of Payee will enable people paying to an account with a name, BSB and account number to confirm the account name of the payee before the payment is made.

This significant tool adds a layer of protection in the prevention of scams and frauds resulting from misdirected payments as well as reducing mistaken payments by consumers.

“Confirmation of Payee delivers on our purpose of uniting people and technology to power better experiences. We are in a unique position to bring industry groups together to create a solution that will help everyone reduce mistaken payments and combat scams and frauds,” Ms Kraus said.

The new solution is expected to be rolled out in phases, with centralised capability including account matching logic and standardised APIs being progressively built and tested throughout 2024, allowing financial institutions to integrate the service into their banking channels starting in early 2025.

In the Netherlands, SurePay has been providing a Verification of Payee (VoP) service to all major Dutch banks since 2017. They recently announced this had resulted in an 81% fraud reduction in payments to Dutch banks and has been a major contributing factor to the EU in making VoP mandatory as part of the SEPA Instant Payment Regulation.

This reinforces our view that COP will add an important layer of protection in the prevention of scams and frauds resulting from misdirected payments as well as reducing mistaken payments by consumers, as part of a suite of other actions.

Secondly, there is PayID. With Australians holding more than 22 million PayIDs, and PayID accounting for one quarter of all Osko transactions, it’s a trusted brand that means you can transfer funds to the right person, at the right time.

AP+ Chief Payments and Schemes Officer Adrian Lovney said PayID was a safe way of transferring money.

“PayID helps customers know who they are paying before they pay. One of the benefits of PayID is that it provides confirmation of the name of the person that the money is going to before the payment is completed,” Lovney said.

“Customers simply need to remember that PayID will never text or message them – it’s not possible for us to do that. If they receive an email or message claiming to be from PayID, customers should ignore it – it’s someone trying to scam them,” Lovney added.

Managing Director of AP+’s digital identity solution ConnectID, Andrew Black said ConnectID cut down people’s exposure to fraud and identity theft.

“ConnectID is now available to Commonwealth Bank, National Australia Bank and ANZ Plus customers,” Black said.

“ConnectID helps customers reduce oversharing their data. What’s important to know is that ConnectID is not creating new honeypots of data, in fact, we never see or store customer data. At every step of the way, ConnectID ensures both convenience and confidence, quickly and securely verifying customer identities,” Black ended.

AP+ has also produced a special episode of its podcast, the AP+ POV, focusing on scams and fraud, available here: www.auspayplus.com.au/podcast