LONDON – United Kingdom’s lawmakers are considering a mandatory 24-hour delay on all first-time payments from one bank account to another to stop ever rising finance fraud, as per sources.
As per UK’s Parliament’s Treasury Select Committee fraudsters stole over 600 Million pounds from consumers in the first half of 2019 and regulators must crack down harder on scammers.
The main obstacle for the banks is that the money transfers between accounts take just seconds giving little or no time to customers or their banks to know whether the transaction was genuine or a fraud took place.
To counter this flaw it is recommended by UK lawmakers now to impose a mandatory 24-hour delay on all initial or first-time payments, while all future payments to that same account would be at normal speed.
It was also advised that if a situation arose whereby an initial payment was needed instantly, a customer could ring their bank and additional checks could be carried out for the funds to be released.
Meanwhile more reforms to stop financial frauds are also in the final phase of implementation.