Protecting payments from the rise in online banking scams

By: Tristan Chiappini, Vice President, Partnerships, Head of APAC at PPRO

It is almost inevitable that shoppers across different demographics have adapted to using digital payments, particularly over the past 2 years. In fact, in 2021 alone, the volume of digital payments had already surpassed that of the year before – with PayNow transactions in Jan-Oct 2021 hitting $64bn as compared to $25bn in the same time period in 2020; and based on our data, the ecommerce market size is set to grow from US$5.9bn in 2021 to US$10.7bn in 5 years. The sheer size of this growth demonstrates the growth potential of digital payments in the country. However, consumers’ uptake of digital payments has correlated with a rise in reports of online scams.

Unfortunately, as people adopt digital payments for the first time there is a certain level of naivety that bad actors are going to take advantage of. This points to a gap in digital security awareness and lack of understanding that first time users inevitably which is accentuated by the incredibly rapid pace with digitalisation that we have seen. Further, as scams grow increasingly complex and sophisticated, even the digital-native generation – who have been brought up surrounded by digital technologies – and we expect to be more familiar with the technologies – has not been spared.

While consumers must be cybervigilant, financial institutions and service providers have a level of responsibility to further step up measures to protect their customers – and there’s innovative ways in which this can be done. For instance, at PPRO, we have leveraged advances in technology to tap into artificial intelligence and machine learning as part of our surveillance and compliance obligations to detect and activate next steps to fight suspicious online payment activity. Solutions like this allow our partners to give their customers peace of mind when making payments with their preferred payment method, so that they can safely enjoy all that digital commerce has to offer.