The money-saving task takes just seconds to do
Scammers are frequently impersonating banks, with the typical person now getting approximately eight dodgy calls each month, Nationwide reports. These criminals often put pressure on victims to reveal personal information, provide security codes, grant remote device access, or transfer funds to fraudulent accounts.
To address this, UK banks have introduced straightforward call-verification systems that enable customers to verify whether a bank call is legitimate immediately – and Monzo is one of them. The process takes just seconds to complete, and the simple check could prevent your cash from disappearing from your account.
Consumer champions at Which? reveal that customers with Nationwide, Barclays, Monzo, Revolut and Starling can all access similar tools designed to help identify banking and financial fraudsters. But how can you make use of it? Here is what you need to know.
How to use your bank’s money-saving tool
- Revolut: Its new ‘we are not talking to you’ feature automatically detects if you are on a call when you open the app and flags whether or not you are talking with a Revolut agent. You can also hang up and use the in-app call feature to reach support securely.
- Nationwide: Account holders can launch the app, navigate to “More”, then “Call Checker”, and immediately verify whether they’re speaking with Nationwide. The display will show either “You’re on a call with [name]” or “You’re not on a call with us.”
- Barclays: Should someone ring claiming to represent Barclays, you can request that they send a secure alert to your Barclays app through ‘app ID’.
- Monzo and Starling: Check for ‘call status’ warnings to see if someone from the bank is genuinely on the phone to you or not (Monzo, who have 14 million customers, show this under its security settings, Starling within the payment screen).
Hang up and diall 159
If your bank does not have a feature like this, or you just need to triple-check, hang up the phone and call 159. It explains: “When you call the number, you’ll hear an automated message asking you which bank you would like to be connected to. Staff will then confirm if the call was genuine, or a scam.”
Participants
- The Co-operative Bank
- Danske Bank
- Chase
- First Direct
- Halifax
- HSBC
- Lloyds Bank
- Metro Bank
- NatWest
- Santander
- TSB
