Businesses Beware:
It’s Not Just Individuals Losing Out To APP Fraud!

UK Finance’s national Take Five to Stop Fraud campaign aims to raise awareness and encourage consumers and businesses to be vigilant about potential scams and fraud by familiarising themselves with red flags and warning signs.

The ‘Can You Spot Fraud’ quiz was designed for small business owners to replicate the conditions of a busy office environment with constantly pinging emails, phone calls and requests from various sources while also slipping in a number of well-disguised scam attempts amongst genuine communications.

Over 7,000 have taken the quiz since it was launched, and 17% of respondents could not always spot a scam when it was attempted.

Businesses of all sizes are attractive targets to scammers as their accounts usually hold more money than that of an individual consumer, and so the criminals’ prize pot is potentially much larger. As demonstrated in the UK Finance quiz, business owners and employees are also prone to more day to day distractions and pressures than individuals, which may make them less likely to pick up on warning signs that a request for an urgent transfer may not, in fact, be what it seems.

Scammers’ tactics for targeting businesses are much the same as those used to target individuals, so business owners must keep themselves and their colleagues aware of red flags and warning signs. Some common APP scams that businesses typically face include:

• Impersonation scams – when the scammer pretends to be or work for an organisation known to the business, e.g. accountant, utility provider, client, supplier, HMRC, etc. and convinces the business owner to transfer funds.
• Fake invoice and payment requests – like an impersonation scam, the scammer will send an invoice purporting to be from a new or existing company supplier, hoping that the accounts department will not double-check the details and will willingly make the payment.
• Interception scams – the scammer intercepts communications from the business to for example a supplier or contractor, which the business plans to pay, and advises that the receiving bank account details have changed, diverting the funds into the scammer’s account.

To keep you and your business safe from fraud, it is always best to take time to verify any requests for money, even if you believe them to be genuine or it looks like just another routine payment. Some steps businesses and individuals can take include:

• Double-check any bank or contact details with the real firm or person in question. Fraudsters can make a phone number or email address appear genuine.
• Be wary of filling in online forms that ask for personal or business details or to make a payment.
• Never give anyone remote access to your computer, especially if they have called you unexpectedly.
• Be wary of banks asking you to move money to a ‘safe account’ – banking institutions never use these, and you should never be asked to transfer your money into one.

Authorised Push Payment (APP) scams are a type of cybercrime that has seen an unfortunate rise recently. Scammers use social engineering techniques to manipulate unsuspecting individuals into transferring, sometimes substantial, funds to accounts that the scammers control.

In most cases, once the victim has transferred funds to the fraudster, the money is swiftly moved on, often overseas or into cryptocurrency and becomes virtually impossible to recover.

1. If you are a business owner or individual who has been the victim of an APP fraud scam, you should follow these steps:
2. Report the scam to the police and Action Fraud, the National Fraud and Cyber Crime Reporting Centre.
   Report the scam to your bank.
3. If your bank refuses to provide a refund, and you believe there is more it could have done to prevent the scam from happening, a complaint can be made to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

UK banks have a duty of care to prevent, spot, and stop scams like this as they happen. The Government-backed Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) investigates complaints between financial institutions and their customers and has the power to award compensation if it finds that the banks have have failed in these responsibilities.