Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Therefore it continues to get worse. I have been dealing with a case of an authorised push payment where a confirmation text from Apple Pay came in at the same time they were attempting to make an online purchase. It was essentially attaching their bank account to the fraudster's Apple Pay account.

Assuming that the text was to confirm the purchase the person had approved, this allowed the fraudsters to make a transfer out of the bank account without being prompted by the banking app for approval each time. In the space of one minute, they had made payments of €50, €200 and €400. The transfers only stopped when the bank account was empty.

Ms Davenport stated that the first sight the bank or financial provider has of the authorised push-payment fraud is when the transaction has already taken place. The same could be said for unauthorised transactions. However, it is long-standing practice that banks monitor suspicious activity, especially that relating to credit cards. In the case I outlined, after Apple Pay was opened for the first time, fraudsters immediately began making transfers that were clearly suspicious and, yet, the bank took no action. Do banks have a responsibility to monitor suspicious activity and protect customers, where possible, from authorised fraud? How is that suspicious activity monitored? What protections can the customers expect from their banks? What are the statutory rights of customers who are impacted by app fraud? How does credit card security compare with debit card security? What is the justification for the disparity between them?