Business push payment fraud hits £83 million

04 Jul 2024

Authorised push payment (APP) fraud against businesses rose to £83 million last year, according to in the Payment Association's Annual Fraud Report 2024.

The total is the highest amount since the pandemic, up 8% from 2022, while the amount recovered fell by 2% to £30.8 million.

APP fraud is when the victim is tricked into sending money to a fraudster's account.

This can be done by 'malicious redirection', such as a fraudster impersonating a staff member from a bank to transfer money across, a member of staff from a financial services company.

Although the amount of money stolen through APP is growing, the number of cases has dropped by 2,000 since 2020 when there were 9,407 confirmed cases.

Riccardo Tordera, Director of Policy for the Payments Association, said: 'Often, APP fraud attempts can be as simple as a text claiming to be from a bank asking for funds to be transferred.

'The problem stems from how many people a fraudster can target with that message: years of data leaks mean that bad actors can get tens of thousands of phone numbers for very little, and if a fraud attempt is only 1% effective, it could still cost hundreds of people thousands of pounds.

'In short, it isn't the sophistication but the scale of APP fraud that is most worrying.'