Banks given extra time to ‘break the spell’ of scammers before sending payments

Payment service providers such as banks will be given more time to contact customers, police and others when they have reasonable grounds to suspect fraud before they send a payment, under draft legislation published on Tuesday.

It will give providers a further 72 hours to investigate payments, but only where there are reasonable grounds to suspect fraud or dishonesty and more time is needed to contact the customer or other parties such as law enforcement, the Government said.

The legislation will generally apply to authorised push payments (APPs).