Food for Thought

At a recent conference, I heard the phrase “Faster Payments-Faster Fraud” used repeatedly across several sessions by different speakers and wondered “What went wrong with Faster Payments?” I braced myself for the horror stories to come only to find out that “Faster Payments-Faster Fraud” simply referenced fraud happening to consumers using that specific transaction and user application, and that the fraud occurred long before the consumer pushed send. In other words, the fraud occurred with the person not the platform.

Of course when we say “Faster Fraud,” we don’t mean to imply faster payments are more dangerous. In fact, most applications and rails are credit push systems that require the consumer to validate the address to which they are pushing. Perhaps we need to stop using the term “Faster Fraud” altogether and start looking at where fraud occurs so we can look for ways to combat it through awareness and increased education. After all, words matter, and perception is everything.