Authorised push payment fraud is a scam in which customers are tricked into sending a payment themselves to an account a fraudster controls, believing it to be genuine. The customer authorises the payment and it passes every authentication check, because the customer really did make it. The deception lies in why they are paying, or to whom.
Why does it matter once AI agents act?
Authentication cannot stop it. Every control that proves the customer is present works perfectly, and the money still goes. Defence depends on context: a new payee, an amount out of pattern, urgency, or a story the customer repeats that fraudsters are known to tell.
Agents can read those signals at the moment of payment and across the customer's history, faster than any person. But stopping a customer from moving their own money is a serious step, and so is telling them they are being deceived. The agent's job is to contain risk while a person concludes, the argument made in in fraud, an agent should contain, not conclude. Some markets, including the UK, also require payment firms to reimburse many victims, with the cost shared between the sending and receiving firms, which raises the stakes on both sides.
What forms does it take?
- Purchase scams: goods that never exist, paid for by bank transfer.
- Investment scams: promised returns on schemes that are fake.
- Romance scams: a relationship built over weeks, then a request for money.
- Impersonation: a caller posing as the bank, the police or a tax authority, often asking the customer to move money to a "safe account".
- Invoice redirection: a business is told a supplier's bank details have changed.
What may an agent do, and what stays with a person?
An agent can score a payment's context, ask the customer structured questions in the payment flow, hold a payment for review where the bank's policy allows, and assemble evidence for a later claim. The detail is in can an AI agent stop an authorised push payment scam?
A person decides whether to refuse a payment the customer insists on, whether to release a payment held for fraud checks, and whether to reimburse. Agents can prepare the reimbursement file, as described in how to handle push payment scam reimbursement claims with an AI agent, but the decision is a judgement about what the customer knew and did.
What does that look like in an example?
A building society customer in her seventies tries to move 9,000 of savings to a new payee. In the payment flow she types that the bank's security team told her to move it to a safe account. No genuine bank asks for that. The agent holds the payment and routes the case to a fraud specialist, who calls her on the number on file. The caller who contacted her earlier was a fraudster.
How is it different from account takeover?
In account takeover, someone else uses the customer's access to send the money; the customer did not act. In authorised push payment fraud, the customer acts, deceived. A takeover is detected by asking whether the customer is the one acting. A scam is detected by asking whether the customer is acting freely and on true information. The questions, the evidence and the liability differ, so the two should be handled as separate case types. Both sit within the limits set out in AI agents in banking.
Questions people ask
Can a bank refuse a payment the customer has authorised?
Banks can delay or decline payments in some circumstances, such as a reasonable suspicion of fraud, under their terms and local rules. That decision should be taken by a person, recorded, and explained to the customer.
Is invoice redirection a form of APP fraud?
Yes. A business that pays a genuine invoice to fraudulent bank details has authorised the payment while deceived about the payee, which is the defining feature.