Malaysia’s banks and Payments Network Malaysia (PayNet) are working toward industry-wide fraud alerts that “can warn banks and customers of potential risks before a transaction is completed,” Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) Governor Abdul Rasheed Ghaffour said on Tuesday, October 6, 2026. A pilot with selected banks is targeted for the first half of 2027, ahead of wider implementation. He spoke in Kuala Lumpur at the 16th International Conference on Financial Crime and Counter Terrorism Financing (IFCTF).
“These alerts will prompt customers to pause, think and verify before proceeding,” the governor said, acknowledging the cost. “We recognise that this capability may introduce additional friction for customers. However, these measures are necessary to strike an appropriate balance between offering convenience and protecting customers from fraud, particularly authorised scams.” In those scams, the account holder sends the money after being deceived.
Alerts aimed at scams that victims authorize themselves
About 95% of online fraud cases now involve victims who are deceived into transferring funds themselves, Abdul Rasheed said, and artificial intelligence makes it easier for criminals to manipulate them. He cited an Interpol estimate that AI-enabled fraud is 4.5 times more profitable than traditional methods. “Criminals no longer operate at the speed of people. They operate at the speed of technology,” he said.
The speech did not name the banks that will take part in the pilot or explain what would trigger an alert.
Network data already flags mule accounts
The governor cited a pilot on mule accounts, which receive and pass on stolen money, to show what pooled network data can do. Since October 2025, the National Fraud Portal has piloted the analysis of payment network patterns to identify potential mule accounts. PayNet has flagged more than 1,600 suspicious accounts, “many of which were subsequently assessed as presenting mule-related risks,” he said. Connecting information across institutions can surface risks “that may appear invisible from the perspective of any one individual institution,” he added.
BNM, PayNet, and financial institutions launched the portal on August 20, 2024, for the National Scam Response Centre (NSRC). It automates the handling of scam reports and the tracing of stolen funds across the financial system.
New fraud rules and a jump in fraud prevented
BNM has revised its Risk Management in Technology policy document and recently issued a Financial Institutions’ Response to Fraud policy document, which the governor said “further reinforces accountability for fraud risk management.” He presented the planned alerts as building on these foundations. Malaysia’s financial sector prevented about RM1.9 billion in attempted fraudulent transactions in the first half of 2026, compared with RM1.2 billion in all of 2025, according to BNM.
Europe’s payee check compares a name with an account
In the EU, the Instant Payments Regulation has required payment service providers in the euro area to offer Verification of Payee since October 9, 2025, and will extend the requirement to other member states on July 9, 2027, according to the European Central Bank. Before the payment is initiated, the service informs payers of any discrepancy between the account identifier they entered and the name of the intended payee. It checks only that match, so a transfer to a correctly named account that a scammer controls still passes.
In France, manipulation fraud, in which deceived victims approve the payment themselves, reached €516 million in 2025, just over 40% of the total value of payment fraud, according to the Banque de France’s payment security observatory, in a report published September 9, 2026. That figure measures value, while BNM’s 95% counts online fraud cases, so the two are not directly comparable.