Which?, the UK's consumer standards and rights organisation, has made made a 'super-complaint' to the UK's Payment Systems Regulator (PSR), asking whether banks and regulators should do more to protect against payment fraud. The super-complaint relates to concerns about consumer safeguards in the market for push payments.

The organisation is currently promoting a campaign called ‪#StopScams on social media and says that people who are tricked into transferring money to a fraudster deserve better protection. It argues that consumers who are conned into authorising a bank transfer to a criminal should have more protection from both financial regulators and banks, in the same way that victims of credit card fraud are able to recoup lost money.

A super-complaint can be made by certain representative bodies, who are authorised to complain to the PSR if they believe that “features of the payment systems market are, or appear to be, significantly damaging to the interests of service-users.”

Consumers 'too easily tricked'

The complaint filed by Which? raises the issue of consumers being too easily tricked into making payments to fraudsters. The organisation says that when consumers receive a 'push' payment, the appropriate level of protection is not in place, compared to other types of payment.

Which? asks whether banks are able to reduce consumer harm from scams that trick people into authorising push payments to a fraudster. The company also proposes changes to legislation or regulation, to incentivise banks and payment system operators to take action against such fraud, as well as to “ensure that more is done to manage the risks from these types of scams and to protect consumer from harm”.

The PSR has said it will examine the evidence Which? has supplied and gather its own to build a clearer picture of the issue and decide a course of action.

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CTMfile take: This is the first 'super-complaint' received by the PSR and it's an interesting one because it brings into question the role of regulators and pushes them and banks to do much more to protect consumers against this common type of payment fraud, which is also a problem for companies. The PSR has 90 days to respond and it will be interesting to see how they react.