Four large Polish banks to change rules for refunds after fraudulent transactions
Four large Polish banks - Alior Bank, mBank, BNP Paribas and Bank Millennium - will change how they handle customer complaints about unauthorized payments. The banks will also re-examine some applications that previously resulted in refusals to refund money.
This was announced by the Polish Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) following almost four years of proceedings against the banks.
The regulator examined situations where money disappeared from customer accounts as a result of transactions that the account holders themselves declared as unauthorized. UOKiK concluded that banks did not always follow the statutory rules for returning such funds.
Money must be returned by the end of the next business day
As a general rule, after notification of an unauthorized transaction, the bank must immediately refund the customer the amount - no later than the end of the next business day after the transaction is detected or a relevant application is received.
Exceptions are possible, in particular, if the bank has reasonable and properly documented grounds to suspect fraud by the customer themselves and has reported this to law enforcement agencies.
At the same time, the initial refund does not mean the bank has finally accepted its liability. If it later proves that the transaction was possible because of intentional actions by the customer or their gross negligence, the bank may demand repayment of the funds paid.
What did not satisfy the Polish regulator
UOKiK established that in some cases banks did not return money within the statutory deadline. Sometimes they credited funds only temporarily - for the period of complaint review, and then re-debited them from the account if they decided that the customer had authorized the payment or was responsible for it.
Another complaint concerned how banks interpreted transaction confirmation. Financial institutions could refuse refunds on the grounds that the transaction was correctly confirmed using a card, code or banking application.
UOKiK emphasises that authentication and authorization are different concepts. Entering a code, using a card or confirming in an application proves the use of an appropriate method of identification, but does not by itself prove that the consumer consciously agreed to a specific transaction.
Banks will review old refusals
Alior Bank, mBank, BNP Paribas and Bank Millennium proposed changes that UOKiK recognized as sufficient to close the proceedings.
The commitments include not only changing the rules for the future. The banks must re-analyse some of customer complaints about unauthorized transactions that had previously been rejected.
Thus, some customers who were previously refused compensation for losses after fraudulent or other unauthorized payments may have an opportunity for their cases to be reviewed according to the new approach.
UOKiK President Tomasz Chróstny stressed that the decision to accept the banks' commitments is not a compromise with the regulator. This mechanism is used only when the measures proposed by the institution fully eliminate the identified violation and its consequences.
Banks strengthen anti-fraud protection
In parallel, Polish banks have been introducing additional systems to combat financial fraud in recent years. Among them are the use of artificial intelligence and behavioural biometrics to detect suspicious activity.
They also use so-called cooling periods - a delay in executing certain transactions, which gives extra time to detect fraud, and features like a "panic button" that allows the customer to quickly block transactions.
The decisions regarding the four banks do not end the review of the entire Polish market. According to UOKiK, ten more similar proceedings against other banks remain open.
Source: UOKiK
