Barclays to Renovate Security, Hopes to Cut Fraud by 75%

Barclays called financial fraud a “national resilience issue” in a recent anti-fraud announcement wherein they spoke of the prevalence of the so-called “invisible” crime. The bank revealed plans for a $12 million advertising campaign as a step towards fraud prevention. Younger account holders between the ages of 25 and 34 were at twice the risk for financial fraud than “older generations,” Barclays said. And the new campaign reflects those statistics; it places special focus on the younger aged men and women, along with “those living in urban areas.”

They will make changes to the Barclays mobile application as well. Some of the changes they plan on bringing to the table already exist in other mobile applications; they are not groundbreaking updates. For instance, the ability to lock your credit or debit card remotely exists in roughly half of the Android banking applications for major US banks and slightly more than half for iOS apps.

The control may be more granular than many applications I examined; for instance, the app will allow cardholders to “instantly turn off and on the functions that allow their card to be used to make remote purchases.” Additionally, users of the new app can set their own ATM withdrawal limits—likely not above the maximum withdrawal limit on the account previously defined by the bank.

The chief executive of Barclays UK said: “Fraud is often wrongly described as an invisible crime, but the effects are no less damaging to people’s lives [than readily visible crimes]. He explained that, “as a society, our confidence in using digital technology to shop, pay our bills and connect with others has grown faster than our knowledge of how to do so safely.”

Barclays head of digital safety, Laura Flack, spoke of the “cyber-fraudster” and how everyone likely knows someone affected by a financial cybercrime.

“Crooks are using ever more sophisticated tactics to trick people into handing over their bank details, or to pay money to a fraudster when they believe they are simply paying their builder or solicitor,” she explained. Barclays research revealed that 17 percent of individuals do nothing after an attack on their finances. This, along with prevention in the first place, is what Barclays aims to change.

Barclays believes that if people followed these security tips, fraud could be reduced 75 percent:

1. Never give out your full online banking pin, passcode or password to anyone – even a caller claiming to be from the police or your bank.
2. Do not click on any link or open an attachment on any email you receive which is unsolicited.
3. Avoid letting someone you do not know have access to your computer, especially remotely.