P2P Fraud with John Meyer // Cornerstone Hot Takes

P2P is new, and it was one of the number one technology drivers in 2022 for our credit union clients. They all wanted to get Zelle up and running.

Yeah. And I think what they’ve all learned is, boy, they had to throw a lot more people at looking at those Zelle transactions.

For one, to be controversial, Zelle is the old person’s payment rail.

Yeah.

And that’s the audience that’s most likely to get socially engineered.

Sure.

So I think one of the things you’ve got to think about is, how do you educate that demographic about the risks? The risks of the old Craigslist scam, like, “Hey, I’ll sell you my lawnmower. Just Zelle me 50 bucks,” and the lawnmower doesn’t exist.

Right, right.

To the, “Hey, I’m your bank. I just sent you a one-time passcode to verify this Zelle transaction. Can you read it back to me?”

Right, which is, “Give me your password.”

Right. So I think that’s one of the issues.

But we’re also even seeing it in the younger demographics that use Cash App and Venmo. Those don’t have a really good way of getting fraudulent transactions reported and recovered.

Right.

So as millennials and Gen Z establish greater and greater relationships, that’s going to be a challenge for institutions to find out how to manage that particular P2P challenge.