Scam alerts ignored by up to 30% of users of Hong Kong’s Faster Payment System for bank transfers

Up to 30 per cent of users of a major Hong Kong online bank payment system have ignored scam alerts and gone ahead with transactions, with half a million warning messages sent in the past four months, police and financial authorities have revealed.

Chief Superintendent Raymond Lam Cheuk-ho of the force’s cybersecurity and technology crime bureau said on Wednesday that 505,000 scam alerts were sent to users of the Faster Payment System (FPS) between the launch in November of the warning system and March.

The half million alerts involved potential losses of HK$600 million.

Arthur Yuen Kwok-hang, deputy chief executive of the Monetary Authority (HKMA), the city’s de facto central bank, said between 20 and 30 per cent of FPS users had continued with transactions despite receiving scam alerts. A rate of 30 per cent would suggest that more than 151,000 alerts were ignored.

“We are not sure about the circumstances, we and police are looking into that,” Yuen said.

“It could be that they are actually fraudsters themselves, but to the extent there are people disregarding the alerts and falling victims to the scams, we think they are not making the best use of the alert.”

Since November, FPS users have received a warning when they enter details of recipient accounts flagged by the police force’s Scameter database as “high risk” for having a history of involvement in fraud.

FPS was introduced in 2018 to allow users to transfer money using proxy identification, such as a mobile phone number or email address.