Australian bank Westpac has confirmed it has enhanced its Fraud and Scam Operations team as well as launched a new feature to significantly increase its scope over fraud prevention.
The new Westpac mobile fraud prevention app feature, Westpac SafeCall, is a dial-up help centre that assists Australian customers if they are concerned about a potential fraud or scam attack against them.
Westpac SafeCall provides customers with calls via the app that are Westpac branded, verified by Optus and show a reason for the call. It presents customers with a series of questions in instances where a payment is considered a high-risk of being a scam.
Westpac Verify, an additional solution, alerts customers when there is a potential account name mismatch when they’re adding a new payee using a BSB and account number. Verify was recently introduced for St.George, Bank of Melbourne, and BankSA customers.
Dynamic CVC also helps change the three-digit code on the back of the digital card every 24 hours. This feature is also available for St.George, Bank of Melbourne, and BankSA customers. There is also a cryptocurrency blocks feature for payments to certain digital currency exchanges.
Furthermore, Westpac’s new hires join a 500 person team to support customers who may be impacted by fraud or scams, while the digital reporting feature complements the current scam detection and prevention measures available to customers.
Westpac Group Executive, Customer and Corporate Services, Carolyn McCann, said: “We are investing heavily in our scam detection and prevention capabilities to help keep our customers safe, though we know scammers keep evolving their tactics so we encourage customers to be on alert.
“The addition of 50 new team members and a new reporting feature are critical steps in our strategy to combat scammers and build on the work we’ve done over the past few years. We’re swimming against a rising tide of scams right now and we’re making good progress. However, scam protection is a team sport and we need other organisations across Australia to play their part.
“It’s so important that social media platforms take action to shut scams down at the source, whether that’s acting faster to remove fake ads after customer reports or verifying ads from financial service providers. We need to collectively make Australia a harder target for scammers to operate.”
These new additions to Westpac’s anti-fraud operations come as the bank continues to invest in new detection and prevention measures, which stopped customers from losing $237m to scammers in 2024.
