The UK Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) has confirmed the implementation date for Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud scam protections as 7 October, and published its high value APP scams review and consultation.
The Payments Association's Director General Tony Craddock and its Head of Policy and Government Relations Riccardo Tordera have commented on the Payments Systems Regulator's APP fraud reimbursement threshold.
Tony Craddock said: “The PSR’s announcement gives our community a further opportunity to share evidence about how the £415,000 is likely to fail to achieve our collective desired outcomes of protecting consumers and reducing fraud. We want to praise the regulator for seeing the societal benefit of this change and listening to the payments sector regarding its concerns.
“Our concern, which we expressed multiple times throughout the past few years both publicly and privately to government and regulators, was for the negative impact this sum would have had on the economy, the payments sector and the consumer. We will continue to encourage initiatives that prevent fraud in the first place. We still don’t have legislation that involves tech giants such as social media platforms where a significant number of these cases begin. Scrapping fraud at its source is the most powerful way to ensure consumers don’t fall victim of a scam.”
Riccardo Tordera said: "The proposed decrease in the threshold to £85,000 is positive, but £30,000 would have been more appropriate, and this is what we will continue to push for at The Payments Association, as that would cover more than 95% of APP fraud cases. The average scam is £12,000 for businesses and less than £2,000 for individuals. For the remaining 5%, a police report should be mandatory before it moves any further.
“That being said, a likely reduction to £85,000 indicates our overall reasoning has been taken into account and we will continue to work constructively with the regulator. Perfect is the enemy of good, so for now we can be happy – things can always change at a later stage.”
