Australia will look to battle an influx of fraud attacks on its soil thanks to a new initiative spearheaded by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA).
The new project will see the new Scam Indicator technology – developed by the CBA in collaboration with Quantium Telstra – being rolled out to customers after completing its pilot phase of using algorithms to ID scam phone calls.
Further protection will involve CBA’s NameCheck technology being deployed across more companies that deal with payments, whose customers will now be able to accurately identify if their names and account details are correct before making a payment application.
Matt Comyn, CEO of CBA, commented: “We are focused on helping customers stay safe by improving early detection and prevention of scams and want to make Australia less attractive for scammers.
“While we have seen progress with investment scams reducing following recent changes to cryptocurrency payments, we know the risk of losing money to scams continues to be a top concern for our customers. The battle is ongoing and we must all remain vigilant to scams.
“This type of crime is constantly evolving, so to combat it effectively we must coordinate across financial institutions, telcos, government, social media and digital platforms.
“There’s certainly a lot of work that needs to be done and these sorts of partnerships with others in the ecosystem are hugely important. Bringing the strength of different players together provides us with a better chance of stopping the scammers.”
CBA data has highlighted that NameCheck is already actively preventing fraud since initially going live in 2022, with more than 10,000 scam payments being averted that would have otherwise scraped businesses with an excess of $38mn.
Comyn added: “We remain committed to playing our part to address this national priority alongside leading businesses, government, and the broader community. Working collaboratively with all sectors is essential and means that we are all able to do better for the Australian community.
“It is why we are making our industry-leading NameCheck technology available to other organisations who can help to make payments safer and more reliable.”
