We have carefully selected relevant news stories that you should be aware of from June 2019.
Fraud prevention: what retailers are doing to beat online scammers
21st June 2019: Online fraud is on the rise. According to trade association UK Finance, scams against online retailers totalled £265.1 million in 2018, up 29% on the previous year. However, retailers are increasingly arming themselves in the fight against cybercrime. Last year the sector spent 17% more on cybersecurity, found a recent survey by the British Retail Consortium [Essential Retail].
JPMorgan is reportedly planning a digital bank in the UK to rival Monzo and Goldman Sachs’ Marcus
20th June 2019: JPMorgan is reportedly set to launch a new online retail banking project in the UK, according to TechCrunch.
The bank’s secretive project comes just weeks after it closed down its millennial retail offering Finn in the US, which left JPMorgan with plenty of lessons to learn.
JPMorgan has been reaching out to developers to build a product which could challenge Goldman Sachs’ Marcus and the competitive UK challenger bank scene, dominated by brands like Monzo [Business Insider].
London revealed as UK capital of fraud and scams
20th June 2019: London is the UK’s fraud capital, with more scams reported per person than anywhere else in the country, new research shows. Consumer group Which? collated the data and is calling on the government to urgently implement better fraud prevention measures.
Jenny Ross, the editor of Which? Money magazine, said: “Fraud is spiralling out of control, so any measures that can help combat this worsening crime – such as the introduction of vital name check security for bank transfers – should be quickly introduced.“
“The government must set out an ambitious agenda, with real accountability, to finally tackle the growing threat from scams, which are having a devastating impact on the lives of victims.”
Of the reports made to Action Fraud in the past two years, nearly half (239,206) fell into four categories: online shopping and online auctions fraud was the biggest reported type of fraud with 86,127 cases, followed by advance fee fraud, computer fixing fraud, and cheque, plastic card and online bank fraud [Independent].
Multi-layered fraud strategies are crucial to win the battle against authorised push payment fraud
20th June 2019: Effective APP fraud strategies combining intelligence-driven tools and behavioural biometrics technologies enable positive profiling to allow businesses to separate legitimate customers from the fraudsters [SC Magazine].
UK data regulator admits its own website does not conform to GDPR
18th June 2019: The UK’s privacy regulator’s own website does not conform to GDPR, the authority has admitted. The Information Commissioner’s Office admitted that its use of cookies, small tracking files used to record information about visits to a website, was not up to standards set by the EU’s strict privacy laws.
The GDPR requires organisations to ask permission before placing these files on someone’s computer, but the ICO’s own website says it relies on “implied consent” [Telegraph].
My month with Monzo: did it revolutionise my finances?
6th June 2019: My first experience with a digital bank did not go well. Taking out a credit card with Tandem turned into a nightmare when my card stopped working, the company failed to answer my complaints and I had to go all the way to the Financial Ombudsman Service to get to the bottom of it all.
But I am nothing if not persistent. One bad episode was not going to put me off hipster banking altogether. So I turned to Monzo. With two million customers it is the country’s biggest – but is it the best?
The sign up process was remarkably easy and a brightly coloured card (or “hot coral” as Monzo calls it) was in my hand a couple of days later.
As well as delivering the card much quicker than high street banks,… [Telegraph].
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