In an effort to boost scam protection for its customers, Westpac is adding 50 new team members to its Fraud and Scam Operations team and a new feature that allows customers to report a scam, fraud or mistaken payment through the app.
This comes as the bank continues to invest in new detection and prevention measures, which stopped customers from losing $237 million to scammers in FY24.
Westpac Group Executive, Customer and Corporate Services, Carolyn McCann says Westpac will continue to crack down on scammers and urges customers to remain alert.
"We are investing heavily in our scam detection and prevention capabilities to help keep our customers safe, though we know scammers keep evolving their tactics so we encourage customers to be on alert," Ms McCann said.
"The addition of 50 new team members and a new reporting feature are critical steps in our strategy to combat scammers and build on the work we've done over the past few years. We're swimming against a rising tide of scams right now and we're making good progress. However, scam protection is a team sport and we need other organisations across Australia to play their part.
"It's so important that social media platforms take action to shut scams down at the source, whether that's acting faster to remove fake ads after customer reports or verifying ads from financial service providers. We need to collectively make Australia a harder target for scammers to operate."
The new hires join the team of 500 people supporting customers who may be impacted by fraud or scams, while the digital reporting feature complements the current scam detection and prevention measures available to Westpac customers. These include:
- Westpac SafeCall - announced recently and coming soon, Westpac SafeCall provides customers with calls via the app that are Westpac branded, verified by Optus and show a reason for the call.
- Westpac SaferPay - presents customers with a series of questions in instances where a payment is considered a high risk of being a scam.
- Westpac Verify - alerts customers when there is a potential account name mismatch when they're adding a new payee using a BSB and account number. Verify was recently introduced for St.George, Bank of Melbourne, and BankSA customers.
- Dynamic CVC - changes the three-digit code on the back of the digital card every 24-hours. This feature is also available for St.George, Bank of Melbourne, and BankSA customers.
- Cryptocurrency blocks - for payments to certain digital currency exchanges.
- Merchant blocks - for payments to businesses deemed high-risk of being a scam (e.g. offering fake or misleading products and services).
- Call spoofing measures - added 94,000 Westpac numbers to the 'Do Not Originate' list preventing scammers from impersonating the bank's phone numbers.
- Inbound payment detection - monitoring on payments coming into the bank to check for potential scam indicators, with funds held where a scam is detected.
- Sophisticated detection technology - advanced behavioural tool helping combat remote access scams.
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