NAB customer alerts lead to 17% decline in scam losses

Customers are said to have abandoned $100m in possible scam payments.

National Australia Bank (NAB) said that its customers have abandoned $100m in possible scam payments in the 15 months since it introduced payment alerts and removed SMS links in its digital banking app.

The alerts target invoice, investment, romance, and goods and service scams in the NAB app and internet banking portal, the bank said in a press release posted on its website.

Customer scam reports have increased by 10% between October 2023 and March 2024, NAB said. 

At the same time, customer losses decreased by 17%.

“Since we announced last July, we were removing links from SMSes, we’ve sent more than 40 million text messages to customers without links,” said NAB executive group investigations Chris Sheehan.

“That’s 40 million moments in 12 months where we’ve been able to make banking safer for our customers by making it easier to distinguish if a text message from NAB is legitimate,” Sheehan added.

In July 2023, NAB also introduced blocking to some high-risk cryptocurrency merchants in line with industry. 

“As a sector, banks have contributed to a 74% decrease in scam losses linked to crypto when comparing October to December 2023 to the same time frame the previous year,” Sheehan said.

For July 2024, NAB has launched the latest version of its ‘Red Flags’ campaign on social media, online channels and outdoor billboards. The campaign highlights a moment that a customer reconsiders a payment after receiving a payment alert.