Not upheld: scam / impersonation fraud - failure to prevent payment complaint against Wise Payments Limited

Decision detail

Summary

Mr P fell victim to an impersonation scam and was tricked into sending £2,977.70 EUR from his Wise account to a scammer's account, believing he was protecting his money from fraud. He complained that Wise should have identified the payment as suspicious and discussed it with him before processing it. The ombudsman reviewed Mr P's account history and found the payment was not sufficiently unusual or uncharacteristic to warrant Wise's intervention, as the amount was modest compared to his historical transactions. The ombudsman also confirmed Wise took appropriate recovery steps once notified. The complaint was not upheld, with the ombudsman noting the fault lay with the scammers, not Wise.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

The ombudsman applied the Payment Services Regulations framework, which presumes the customer liable for authorised payments in the first instance. However, financial institutions may take additional steps to protect customers when payments are sufficiently unusual or uncharacteristic. The ombudsman reviewed Mr P's account history and concluded the payment was not remarkable enough to have stood out to Wise. The payment amount was modest relative to Mr P's historical transactions, and it is common for customers to make one-off payments of this amount. The ombudsman noted that financial institutions must balance processing customer instructions against monitoring for suspicious activity, and it would be unfair to expect Wise to have identified this payment as suspicious without hindsight. Additionally, Wise took appropriate recovery steps once notified and could not have done more.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website