Not upheld: scam and unauthorised transactions complaint against PSI-Pay Ltd (trading as Pockit Limited)

Decision detail

Summary

Mr F was scammed by someone claiming to be from his bank's fraud department and was persuaded to open a Pockit account and share his security credentials. Two payments totalling £2,995 were made from his Pockit account to a crypto-platform: £945 authenticated via SMS one-time passcode and £2,050 via ApplePay after the scammer added the app to their own device. Mr F reported the matter and Pockit refused to refund the payments. The Investigator upheld the complaint, finding both payments unauthorised, but the ombudsman disagreed. The ombudsman concluded that Mr F took multiple deliberate steps enabling the scammer to complete the payments and, even if unauthorised, Mr F failed with gross negligence to protect his security information by not questioning the SMS OTP content, not verifying the caller's identity, and sharing credentials without sufficient explanation for why they were needed.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

The ombudsman found that while Mr F genuinely believed he was speaking to Bank N's fraud team, the technical evidence showed he took multiple steps that enabled the scammer to complete the payments. The SMS OTP for the first payment explicitly stated it was for a purchase at a specific merchant, which Mr F should have questioned. Mr F shared his login details, card details, and security codes, and approved the addition of the app to a new device via magic link email and verification codes. The ombudsman noted significant discrepancies between Mr F's recollections and the technical evidence, including the timing of transfer attempts to R (which occurred after the disputed payments, contradicting Mr F's explanation for sharing Pockit details). The ombudsman concluded that even if the payments were unauthorised, Mr F failed with gross negligence to keep his security credentials safe, as he could have verified the caller's identity with Bank N, should have questioned the SMS OTP content, and was not under immediate pressure to act.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website