Bank customers need to be careful about online fraud, like phishing. Refunds aren’t always guaranteed in these cases.
This discussion started after recent proposals from Athanasios Rantos, the Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the European Union. He talked about an electronic fraud case in a national court.
The case involved a woman in Poland who clicked on a fake link that looked like her bank’s website. She told the bank right away, but they refused to refund her money. They said she was careless for sharing her details.
The Advocate General pointed out that European payment services laws require immediate refunds for unauthorized transactions. This is unless there’s strong proof that the customer committed fraud.
In Cyprus, the law follows the European PSD2 directive. This directive outlines the rights and duties of payment service users. However, if a user gave access to their account or made a payment thinking it was real, banks might not have to refund them right away.
To help prevent such incidents, new security measures have been put in place. These include dual transaction confirmation and the VoP mechanism, which checks the beneficiary’s identity before sending money.
Also, the upcoming European PSD3/PSR legislation is expected to make banks more responsible and improve consumer protection against electronic fraud.
The European consumer rights directive says that if there are unauthorized transactions, customer liability is usually limited to 50 euros unless gross negligence is shown. After notifying the bank, customers won’t be responsible for any further transactions.
