Committee takes oral evidence on APP fraud reimbursement from PSR, FOS and Pay.UK

The Treasury Sub-Committee on Financial Services Regulations took oral evidence on the authorised push payment fraud reimbursement scheme on 13 December 2022, with the transcript published the following day¹.

The witnesses were Chris Hemsley, Managing Director at the Payment Systems Regulator; Abby Thomas, Chief Executive and Chief Ombudsman at the Financial Ombudsman Service; and David Pitt, Chief Executive at Pay.UK¹. The session formed part of the committee's inquiry into the authorised push payment fraud reimbursement scheme¹.

The committee's work on the subject later produced a report, "Scam reimbursement: pushing for a better solution", published on 6 February 2023 as HC 939¹. The Payment Systems Regulator's response to that report was published as a special report on 14 June 2023 as HC 1500¹.

Further correspondence followed. A letter from Pay.UK to the Chair relating to authorised push payment fraud, dated 17 May 2024, was published on 24 May 2024, and a letter from Chris Hemsley, by then described as Chief Executive of the Payment Systems Regulator, relating to APP fraud and dated 15 May 2024, was published on 21 May 2024¹. Correspondence from Sir Dave Ramsden of the Bank of England relating to APP fraud and CHAPS payments, dated 8 June, was published on 21 June 2023¹.

The committee's published contact details state that it does not look at individual cases or specific complaints¹.

Why it matters for households

Authorised push payment fraud is the term for scams in which someone is tricked into sending money from their own bank account to an account controlled by a fraudster. The question the committee examined is who bears the loss when that happens, and how a reimbursement scheme should work in practice.

The evidence session itself did not set out rates, deadlines or refund amounts. The published record of the session identifies only the date, the inquiry and the three witnesses¹. The committee's report and the regulator's response to it were published later, in February and June 2023¹. The maximum refund available for authorised push payment fraud is not stated in the material published for this session.

The correspondence published in 2023 and 2024 shows the committee continued to seek information on APP fraud from Pay.UK, the Payment Systems Regulator and the Bank of England after the evidence session¹. The letters are dated 15 and 17 May 2024 and 8 June 2023, and were published between 21 June 2023 and 24 May 2024¹.

What happens next

The publications page lists the oral evidence transcript of 13 December 2022, published 14 December 2022; the committee's thirteenth report of 6 February 2023; the special report of 14 June 2023; and the correspondence published in June 2023 and May 2024¹. No further steps arising from the evidence session have been reported in this material.