Best and worst banks for paying out after scams revealed – find out how your bank did

A new report on Faster Payments scams has revealed the best and worst performing banks.

The study looked at three key areas:

• how much money victims got back
• how much money each bank lost as a result of app fraud
• how much money was paid into each bank as a result of fraudulent transactions

The research by the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) focussed on Faster Payments as this is the most common way that fraudsters carry out app scams.

Although less than 0.1% of Faster Payments transactions were fraudulent in 2022, Faster Payments was used for 98% of app fraud payments.

Getting your money back

The banks most likely to give you all of the money you lost after a scam were:

• TSB (94% of reported cases)
• Nationwide (91% of reported cases)
• Barclays (79% of reported cases)

The worst performing banks for giving victims all of their money back were:

• Monzo (6% of reported cases)
• Danske Bank (7% of reported cases)
• AIB (12% of reported cases)

The best performing banks in terms of the overall amount paid back to victims were:

• TSB (91% of total app fraud losses)
• Nationwide (78% of total app fraud losses)
• HSBC (73% of total app fraud losses)

And the worst performing banks for the overall amount paid back to victims were:

• AIB (10% of total app fraud losses)
• Danske Bank (20% of total app fraud losses)
• Monzo (22% of total app fraud losses)

Banks sending fraudulent payments

For every £1m sent in 2022:

• TSB lost £348 to app fraud
• Santander lost £322 to app fraud
• Metro and Monzo lost £280 to app fraud

In comparison, for every £1m sent from customers of AIB, only £23 was lost to app fraud.

For every one million transactions made last year:

• Monzo had 141 reported as app fraud
• Starling and Metrobank had 127 reported as app fraud
• Santander had 117 reported as app fraud

In contrast, for every one million transactions made by Danske Bank customers, only 39 were reported as scams.

Banks receiving fraudulent payments

The banks with accounts receiving the most money through scams were:

• Metro Bank
• Starling
• TSB
• Monzo

For every £1m received into accounts in 2022:

• Metro Bank received £696 from app fraud
• TSB received £605 from app fraud
• Starling received £307 from app fraud
• Monzo received £227 from app fraud

In comparison, for every £1m received into Santander accounts, only £44 was the result of a scam.

For every one million transactions received in 2022:

• Metro Bank had 180 app fraud payments
• Starling had 119 app fraud payments
• TSB had 93 app fraud payments

In contrast, for every one million incoming transactions, just 30 at Santander and 38 at HSBC were the result of a scam.

More consistent protection for victims

Chris Hemsley, the managing director of PSR, said:

“Over the coming months, we will be bringing all payment firms into new reimbursement arrangements to give more consistent protection across the board.

"This is important because we can see from today’s report that this has not always been the case.”