New figures have found that scammers have stolen £500 million from UK bank customers in the first half of 2018.
The trade body UK Finance found that the total figure was lost through authorised push payment (APP) scams and unauthorised fraud.
The trade body said that only £30.9 million of the £145 million that was lost through APP scams was returned to customers.
The current legislation means that the customers that are liable for the losses incurred if they authorise a payment themselves.
The managing director of economic crime at UK Finance, Katy Worobec, said: “The criminals behind it target their victims indiscriminately and the proceeds go on to fund terrorism, people smuggling and drug trafficking, whether or not the individual is refunded.”
Through major investment in security systems and cyber-defences, the industry has managed to prevent two-thirds of unauthorised fraud for the first half of the year.
Gareth Shaw, a money expert at the consumer group Which?, has said that the efforts made by banks has been “woefully insufficient”.
“It’s now two years since our super-complaint highlighted the lack of protection for victims of bank transfer scams, but these shocking figures show just how widespread the problem still is,” he said.
“Banks … have not done enough to protect their customers, who continue to lose life-changing sums of money to ever-more sophisticated crooks.”
“The Payment Systems Regulator has rightly committed to introducing a reimbursement scheme for victims. It’s about time that banks step up and properly compensate customers who have lost money through no fault of their own.”
The first six months of 2018 has seen an increase in money lost to scammers. The same period last year totalled £101 million for losses by APP, compared to this year’s £145 million.
The UK Finance said this year’s increase is partly down to banks reporting more data.
