Five signs a payment request is a scam

The fraud that costs people the most is not the kind where someone steals a card. It is the kind where someone persuades you to make the payment yourself. Because you authorised it, the payment leaves cleanly and the money is often gone within minutes.

Almost every case has the same shape. Learn the shape and you will recognise it even when the story is new.

1. It arrived, you did not go looking for it

A call, a text, an email, a message on a marketplace. You did not initiate contact. That single fact is the strongest signal there is, and it holds even when the caller ID shows a number you recognise — caller ID can be forged, and routinely is.

2. There is a deadline

Your account will be suspended today. The property will go to someone else this afternoon. The officer is waiting. Urgency is not incidental to the scam; it is the mechanism. It exists to stop you doing the one thing that would end it — checking.

3. You are asked to move money to keep it safe

No bank, no police force and no government department will ever ask you to move money to a "safe account". There is no such thing. If your money were genuinely at risk, we would freeze the account ourselves — we do not need your help to do it.

4. The bank details changed at the last minute

This is invoice redirection, and it hits businesses and house purchases hardest. An email arrives from a supplier or a solicitor you have been dealing with for weeks, saying their account details have changed. The email address is a character different from the real one.

Always verify a change of bank details by calling a number you already had — not the one in the email.

5. You have been told not to tell us

You are asked to keep the payment confidential, to describe it as something else if we ask, or to say it is going to your own account. That instruction has exactly one purpose: to get past the check that would have stopped it.

If you think you have paid a fraudster

1. Freeze your card in the app. It takes one tap and is instant.
2. Report it in the app or call us on 020 7946 0100. The sooner we know, the more we can recall.
3. Do not continue the conversation with the person who contacted you.
4. Report it to Action Fraud so it counts towards the national picture.

You will not be judged for it. These attacks are professionally run and designed to be convincing. Telling us quickly is what makes recovery possible.