Authorised push payment fraud is now the dominant loss category across UK retail banking. Unlike card fraud, the customer initiates the payment themselves, which makes traditional velocity rules close to useless.
Across 2.1 million payments flagged by our intervention engine last year, payee relationship age outperformed transaction value as a predictor of loss by a factor of four. A first payment to a brand-new payee, made within eleven minutes of the payee being added, carries roughly 38 times the base rate of fraud.
That finding reshaped our warnings. Instead of a generic interstitial on large amounts, we now show a contextual, evidence-based warning that names the specific pattern we have detected and asks a question the scammer's script cannot answer.
Friction placed precisely is cheap. Friction sprayed everywhere trains people to click through. Our confirmed-loss rate fell 44% in the six months after the change while the proportion of payments interrupted fell by a third.
We are publishing the anonymised methodology so other institutions can replicate it. Fraud is not a competitive advantage.