Over 62% of UK cite mobile app fraud as top concern

Editorial

This content has been selected, created and edited by the Finextra editorial team based upon its relevance and interest to our community.

“Banks and fintechs are worried about fraud happening to them because of the implications from a regulatory perspective and obviously, a financial loss perspective, and so are consumers,” said Chris Roeckl, chief product officer at Appdome, speaking to finextra.

Of the 2,500 UK respondents who were interviewed, 41.3% had first or second hand experiences with cyber-attacks, mobile malware, or mobile fraud. A further 26.9% said they or someone they know has experienced a social engineering scam.

Findings showed a growing awareness of social engineering scams, with 55.1% reporting “vishing” as top risk. Vishing is where scammers trick victims into revealing personal information on phone calls.

Roeckl stated that “what consumers are saying is they want proactive measures so that these fraud attacks actually don’t happen in the first place.” The report saw 94.7% of UK customers expecting mobile apps to protect them from fraud and 80.3% expecting pre-emptive anti-fraud measures.

The survey also showed serious considerations for an app’s reputation. 70.6% of respondents said that on discovering a brand had experienced a breach, they would abandon their app and encourage their friends to do the same.

There is a developing lack of trust, with 25.2% of consumers stating they believe “developers don’t care” about protecting them against fraud or security threats, a rise from 9.3% in 2021.

Looking to how to solve this problem for consumers, Roeckl said they need start “making the system smarter” by “taking information that is coming through the actual activity in the app.”

Roeckl explained: “There are threats and attacks on mobile devices that are the signals that something bad is going to happen, some sort of fraud is going to be perpetuated, or some sort of threat attack is visible on the mobile device. This data can be collected and sent from the device to the mobile app, to a back end fraud system.”

From the Roeckl stated that tactics can be used to end potentially fraudulent sessions, from things such as a pop-up warning, to account or payment transfer restrictions. He said, “Those are technologies that are only starting to emerge today, and things that are that are absolutely on the cutting edge of how to proactively stop fraud.”

He added: “If financial app makers are not making sure that their apps have the have the right security capabilities built into them, with the ability to do proactive fraud reduction elimination, then legislatures will step in all over the place. The technology is there, the systems are there, and it’s not like mobile technology is going away.”

Addressing some of the recent fraud related legislative moves, such as APP fraud mandatory reimbursement coming into effect and the proposal from the UK Treasury to delay payments by up to 72 hours to tackle fraud, Roeckl said, “Technology can solve lots of problems that governments can’t and I think that technology can solve the problem of ensuring that payments can be made reliably and quickly without having to legislate.”