Instant credit transfers become more secure

What happens if the instant transfer is made by the victim of a fraud? The answer is lapidary: absolutely nothing can be done. The money arrives in the fraudster's account after 10 seconds and so goodbye. The latest invention of the crooks is then to pose as a representative of the police force, convincing the victim on duty to make an instant transfer in order to immediately remove the money from the account of that branch where the employees are all said to be thieves.

The fake Iban is obviously provided by the fraudster. Impossible? No, it happened and could happen again. With an ordinary transfer there was 24 hours to block the transaction; with the instant transfer this possibility is no longer there, creating frustration among the specialised police.

Credit institutions are also aware that the instant credit transfer will have decisive consequences on the security side. On the purely technical front, with the advent of the instant credit transfer, the anti-fraud paradigm has changed," UniCredit explains, "which, until then, envisaged the management of suspicious cases in ex post mode, taking advantage of the time elapsing between the finalisation of the transfer and the cut-off time (the moment from which the amounts are sent to the beneficiary banks, ed.)

Unlike standard Sepa payments, by its nature an instant credit transfer has no margin for recovery unless there is specific cooperation from the beneficiary or his bank. For instant credit transfers, therefore, anti-fraud checks have been anticipated during the execution phase of the transaction and take place in real time in order to detect, before the finalisation of the payment, any critical elements'.

It is also necessary for account holders to become aware of how the new payment instrument works.