Safeguarding against fraud: 5 best practices to know

Due to an increase in online shopping in 2020 and 2021, card not present fraud has grown exponentially. With more credit union staff working remote than ever before, employee fraud and business email breaches are on the rise. One in five Americans are now using payment applications such as Zelle, Venmo, and PayPal, and fraud in this space was up 300% this summer. Additionally, social media quizzes and challenges allow for account security question answers to be easily guessed by fraudsters. More and more, the bad actors are posing as the credit union to deceive the member and are getting increasingly creative in their tactics.

While the fraud facts are sobering, with holistic best practices, credit unions can safeguard against various types of fraud.

Here are 5 best practices with an easy-to-remember FRAUD acrostic:

Friends and family only: This is the crucial rule of thumb for using person-to-person payment apps. Even if your credit union does not offer and promote a particular payment app, members can still download the app and link it to their debit card. The likelihood of information and money being stolen goes up drastically when your member uses payment apps outside of friends and family.

 

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