Warning to Santander bank customers over online scams
Customers with Santander have been been warned about purchase scams after a woman was conned out of thousands of pounds.
The UK bank, which has branches in places in the region such as Dudley, Kidderminster, Stafford, Walsall and Wolverhampton, found 70 per cent of purchase scams originated on social media and account holders continued to be caught out.
Santander said a 61-year-old woman was persuaded to make several payments to someone she thought she had made friends with while playing an online game, transferring more than £80,000 and being told to lie about the reasons for the payments.
The bank said it emerged the woman had been the victim of a scam when she started to experience financial hardship and said it had refunded the woman and referred her to its specialist customer support team to check on her welfare and support her in the future.
Santander is now asking banks to include more consistent data sharing and the mandatory use of confirmation of payee, a fraud prevention system which lets customers know whether the name of the person they think they are paying matches the bank account number they are paying money to.
The bank said the Online Safety Bill should be brought forward, and more consideration should be given to how fraudsters are reaching their victims in the first place.
Santander also said there should be "effective and streamlined Government leadership" dedicated to tackling APP fraud.
Enrique Alvarez, head of everyday banking at Santander UK, said: "The sheer scale and value of APP fraud can detract from the real impact of these crimes on individual consumers, who can lose more than just money as their confidence and mental health can also be significantly harmed.
"Unfortunately, we see this far too often, and it is time for us all to act together. The criminals who perpetrate these scams shouldn't be getting away with it.
"As our report shows, there are changes the banking industry can implement, but there are other changes that are clearly outside the banking industry's control, like how fraudsters often reach their victims in the first place.
"We must all come together and address the issue because currently the only real winners are the fraudsters."
