Not upheld: scam - investment fraud, payment recovery complaint against Wise Payments Limited

Decision detail

Summary

Mrs J lost approximately £78,000 through an investment scam after sending funds via Wise to an overseas account. The scammer had encouraged her to open a Wise account and coached her through the payments. While the ombudsman found Wise should have intervened with additional checks and warnings on subsequent payments, it concluded that causation was not established - Mrs J would likely have proceeded anyway given the scammer's influence and her previous experience being coached to mislead her bank. Wise's recovery efforts after notification were deemed reasonable. The complaint was not upheld.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

While Wise should have intervened with additional checks on subsequent payments of similar values, the critical issue is causation. The ombudsman was not persuaded that a scam warning from Wise would have changed Mrs J's decision, given that she had just been coached by the scammer on what to say to her bank to avoid payment blocking, and was under the scammer's influence. Therefore, Wise could not have prevented the loss even with intervention.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website