Monzo launches industry-first tool to help protect customers from impersonation scams

Monzo, the UK’s largest digital bank, has today launched an industry-first feature to help prevent customers from falling victim to impersonation scams. Impersonation scams are typically highly sophisticated fraud attempts in which criminals try to convince consumers that they are from a trusted organisation, such as a bank or a utilities company. If successful, the victim is manipulated into making payments and transfers to the criminals.

While Monzo will never phone customers without arranging it in advance within the app and carrying out various security checks, the new call status feature provides them with an added layer of confidence and security. If the customer’s call status shows that Monzo is not on the phone to them, they are told to hang up straight away. They can also report the attempted fraud immediately, simply by tapping the call status tab.

Priyesh Patel, Senior Staff Engineer at Monzo, said: “We’ve built this industry-first feature as an additional layer of comfort and security to help protect our customers from falling victim to fraud. Impersonation scams are an industry-wide problem and becoming increasingly sophisticated with tens of thousands of people each year convinced to transfer funds out of their accounts and into the hands of fraudsters. With world-class tech at the forefront of everything we do here at Monzo, we continue to invest and innovate to stop fraud from happening, and crucially, before customers are impacted.”

Mark Tierney, Chief Executive at Stop Scams UK, said: “Monzo’s call status tool is a hugely welcome innovation that will help keep people safe against fraud. Enabling consumers to be able to verify that they are talking to a trusted authority is key to beating the scammers. If a consumer ever receives a phone call about any financial matter, it is essential that they check they are actually speaking to their bank and not with a criminal.”